The Artist of Collingwood. By Baron Na Carriag. (McGlashan and
Gill.)—Frank O'Meara, the nephew of an Irish tenant farmer, paints, on the sly, the portrait of his landlord's daughter, with whom he has presumed to fall in love. The landlord is furious, and threatens to eject the family ; and Frank, anxious to avert so dreadful a calamity, exiles himself. Is there not something like a "landlord and tenant's Act" in Ireland ? Or is painting the portrait of your landlord's daughter a legitimate cause for the eviction of a tenant without compensation ? Oar impression is that it is a capital thing for an Irish tenant to be evicted, considering that ho gets almost twice the value of the freehold by way of compensation. This, however, our author does not take account of. Why, indeed, should he, for how, without this machinery, was he to get his hero to Australia ? To do that is manifestly his object ; he has some sketches of Australian life and manners to give us, and rightly judges them to be of sufficient interest to be worth publishing. Then there is a story going on at home. The heroine determines to do something for her own living, and opens a book-shop. This is a vein which might have been worked, but the author neglects it, and fails to tell us how the young lady made the business answer. Everything, of course, ends well. "The Artist of Collingwood," thanks partly to a comic Irishman, is fairly readable.
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