No VILS. — .Redeemeel. By Shirley Smith. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—Mis a Smith
(for we presume that in this case "Shirley" Is a feminine name) makes a point against the critics, when she points out that a story which begins with the marriage of the hero and heroine will probably have something to do with a breach, or threatened breath, of the Seventh Commandment. Her own way of taking the advice and avoiding the difficulty is not without ingenuity. Her hero is married early in the tale to a woman whom he does not love, but whom he might have learned to love, and in whom he might have found real happiness ; he neglects the occasion, and finds too late that it and the whole promise of his life are lost to him alto- gether. We might object, perhaps, that, after all, the novel does end in the old-fashioned way. A young couple are left "to live happy ever after," not without grave doubts on the part of the man whether they are likely to do so. Arthur Mowbray, who gets the prize which is denied to his worthier rival, is it very poor creative indeed, and one cannot help suspecting that he will be no better after his marriage than he was before. It is too tree that in this world such poor creatures do often prosper, where their betters fail ; but there is a touch of cynicism in a tale which adopts such an inversion of what is right. We may laugh at what is called poetical justice ; but, after all, it is, on the whole, the only sound basis ea which fiction can be constructed. But Redeemed is a meritorious work, well written, though not without occasional slips, (what, for instance, does the author mean by "all the learning of [esthetes ?") and decidedly interestiug.—" Gin, a Body Meet a Beck," By Constance M'Ewen. 2 vols. (Chapman and is a very eccentric book indeed. There is a heroine, who might have appropriately held a commission in the Salvation Army ; there is an Amerioan enthusiast, surnamed " The Philothea," who is occupied with schemes of philanthropy, from what we may call the secularist standing-ground ; and there is a hero who starts with being a con- firmed sceptic and ends with accepting the heroine's faith, making thereby decidedly the " best of both worlds," as the lady has in the meanwhile inherited " The Philothea's" vast fortune (that enthusiast having been conveniently drowned in the wreck of an Atlantic steamer). We are as far as possible removed from any desire to ridicule, or in any way depreciate the author's convictions ; but we have a very strong feeling against the attempt to recommend them by a book of this kind, which, by the extravagance and absurdity of its style, injures what it is meant to advance. Here is a specimen : —" Without it !' said Mervin, hurriedly, looking at Cora (the look was a revelation), and raising his hat, be held it for several seconds. Before he placed it on his head again, he had passed through an epoch! Fire of some sort, celestial or otherwise, had stolen into his system, animating the giants and gnomes within him." Elsewhere, we read of "a barrioaded hubbub."—Three Fair Daughters. By Laurence Brooke. 8 vols. (F. V. White and Co.)—Mr. Brooke is content to build his story on the familiar lines ; he aims at nothing extravagant or eccentric, and he achieves a decided success. Mr. Chester has three daughters, and each daughter has one or more love- affairs, the chief of the three, Lenore, coming in for a great deal of complication and trouble in this way. A rich uncle leaves her a fortune (whieh it is taken for granted that she is to hand over to an embarrassed father), but couples it with the condition that she is not to marry the man of her choice, who has had the ill.luck to have been overheard by him during the utterance of some quite unfiatter- ing opinions about his disposition and personal appearance. This is a very heart-breaking dispensation, but it all turns out for the best. The forbidden lover is really an undesirable person, who consoles hint- self for his loss with a facility which speaks ill for his moral stead- fastness; and a worthier lover, who has been unsuccessful in the first chapter, has better luck in the last. Perhaps most readers will find the minor characters of the story the most attractive. One sister makes a quite ordinary marriage of attachment to a wealthy lover. No difficulties of any kind intervene, for the family pride, that might have been an hindrance, is lowered by an opportune disaster ; but Mr. Brooke contrives to make this humdrum couple quite interest- ing. The third sister, who has about as little heart as a human being can live with, but is kindly and good-natured, becomes a leader of fashion, and is always amusing. In fact, this is a novel which evidently shows real literary skill and no small ac- quaintance with his craft in its author.—Daisy Beresford. By Catharine Childar. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blaokett.)—We read through Daisy Beresford without a very keenly excited interest, but with a languid approval, till we roach the end. The heroine has a lover whom she loves, and from whom she is separated by a misunderstanding, which has the merit of in- genuity of contrivance; and another lover, whom she does not love, but whom she converts to earnestness of life. The first lover comes back—every one had thought him dead—the misunder- standing is removed, and then, without any possible reason, every- thing is upset by the heroine's sudden death. Such catastrophes are a blunder of the first magnitude in novels of this kind. There are tales in which the tragical ending is inevitable, the necessary outcome of all that has gone before ; but this novel, essentially a common-place record of love-making more or less serious, is not of this kind; and the miserable ending which Miss Childar has chosen to give to Ibis a more vexation, which quite spoils the reader's pleasure, and serves no purpose, except to make bins eschew what may come before, him hereafter with the same name on the title-page.—Ist the Distance ; an American Story. By G. P. Lathrop. 2 vols. (Sampson Low and Co.) —We have read this story with much pleasure ; it is a wall-conceived, well-exeouted book. The scene is laid in New England, and both the aspects of Nature and the life of the people are described with a quiet force, wholly free from extravagance and character, which cannot fail to make a groat impression on the reader. The heroine has three lovers,—a "divinity student" (a personage, by the:way, who seems much more distinct and prominent in American than he is in English life) ; a lawyer, who is, perhaps, the boot drawn oharacter in the book ; and a student of engineering. There is much skill in the way in which the fortunes of these throe are woven together ; and the crowning scene, where the first is defended by the second against a false charge of having murdered the third, is conceived with real dramatic power. The country folk, especially the farmer, with his wife and son, are characteristic figures ; and so, again, are the Professor, to whom the Christian apologists of the second century are so much more interesting than the living men and women of the nineteenth, and the worldly aunt, with her not very dangerous
scheming.
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