Follaton Priory. 2 vols. (S. Tinsley.)--This is a novel of
the ordinary sensational kind, written in indifferent English. The hero, or one of the heroes, falls in love with a married woman, and we are left for a time in doubt whether she will not elope with him. Happily the two do not get beyond the brink, and the strictest moral justice is satisfied when the lady, set free at last by the death of her husband, feels that an expiation is due to the memory of one whom she had wronged in thought, and refuses to marry her old lover. Adultery having been thus fortunately escaped, we tremble again at the proxi- mity of murder. The beautiful young poisoner, having ascertained that the will of her victim is all right, is just about to drop the fatal poison into his lemonade, when the virtuous athlete, who has run all the way from the railway station to the old hall, dashes in in time to arrest the fatal cup. Of course, he has his reward provided for him ; and as wo find him in Paris with his wife, who is "engaged in quieting a lovely, but very refractory child," while the beautiful poisoner has become one of the chief of the demi-monde, under the sobriquet of "Sans Pour," the reader will see that virtue is properly triumphant. So much must in fairness be said for Follaton Priory, yet wo cannot think that any reader will be edified or even amused by it.
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