Barham. Brocklebank, M.D. By M. Betham-Edwards. (Hurst and Blackett. Os.)—This
novel is a study of character, and cleverly achieved. Not only does Miss Betham-Edwards con- struct for us a country doctor, and make him a vivid and living figure, but she puts the date of her story about fifty years ago, and succeeds in producing successfully the life of that day without giving her readers the feeling that she is striving after an unfamiliar effect. Barham Brocklebank, M.D., is a very good doctor, but he is not a gentleman either by education or feeling. and his great ambition is to rise in the world. That being so, his marriage to a farmer's daughter would perhaps not be quite credible had not Miss Betham-Edwards impressed upon her readers the fact that Betsy (the wife) had .55,000. The weakest thing in the book is the catastrophe at the end. The doctor is represented as a man of violent temper, and on one of his daughters taking a quantity of his favourite roses, which every one is forbidden to touch, ho strikes her with the whip which he happens to have in his hand. Thereupon she immediately breaks off the grand. match which she was about to make, and on which both her own and her father's hearts were set, and goes to India as a governess. This is a species of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face which seems unnatural in so ambitious a young lady as Alicia. The result at which she aims, the annoyance of her father, is, however, completely attained, for the doctor dies of a broken heart while signing the deed which is to dispose of his practice in the place where he feels himself disgraced. The book is better constructed and contains more careful writing than the majority of modern novels, and Miss Betham-Edwarda is to be congratulated on a good piece of work.
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