Miss Lou. By E. P. Roe. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)—This
is evidently one of the last stories the late popular American novelist produced, and it is one of his best. Mr. Roe was altogether at home in the American Civil War and in the divisions among families which it produced, and he has never drawn any better character than the spirited Southern girl, Miss Lou, who is sought in marriage by her Confederate cousin, Madison Whatley, while she has lost her heart to a Unionist officer whose life she saves. The troubles of a Southern family whose homestead was liable to capture and recapture, owing to the fluctuations of the Civil War, are very well reproduced ; and so are the perplexities of the negroes, who, in consequence of the same fluctuations, were free men one day and slaves again the next. The plot against the brutal, drunken, and, indeed, murderous overseer, recalls, in some of its humours, the conspiracy against Halley in " Uncle Tom's Cabin." But Aun' Jinkey and Uncle Lushtah are both Mr. Roe's ; are, indeed, " originals " in every sense of the word. The appearance, too, of Miss Lou on the scene of an intended duel between two of her lovers, recalls a somewhat similar "effect" in M. Ohnet's best- known novel ; but then, the morality which she teaches on this occasion is distinctly American, not French.
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