"Unto which she was not Born," by Ellen Gadesden (Tinsley),
has the merit of being condensed into one volume. We must object to the title, as not conveying an idea of the story correctly, for it was not the "honour' which weighed upon the heroine's mind, so much as the fatal mistake she committed, which certainly obtained her the "honour," but was not committed for the "honour's" sake. Such stories are always painful, and specially so when, as in this case, there was nothing but a few chance words, which were overheard, to produce such weighty consequences. Had the heroine been brave and true, she might have been happy; being untrue to herself, she makes herself and others miserable. So far the moral which the story carries on the face of it is good, but it is by no means powerfully enforced ; and the characters of orphan niece, worldly aunt, rejected cousin-lovers, and precious, in- estimable lord, possessed of varied virtues, have been used so often, that it must require the highest genius at this time of day to make out of them an original tale. There is, too, a sad tendency in many novelists, from which this writer is not free, to make their heroine, while really right-minded, or rather, perhaps, having a sense of duty, yet do things after her marriage from which any delicate-minded woman would shrink ; but that comes of selecting for subject these fatal mistakes, without which, however, many novels would not have even one volume.
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