Civil Service. By J. T. Listado. 2 vols. (Henry S:
King and Co.)— Mr. Listado is pleased to call his novel by this title of "Civil Service," and he justifies the name by a smart description, of the caricature kind, of a Public Office. The hero, a young Irish gentleman, gets an ap- pointment in the Cheque Office ; and Mr. Listado is very sarcastic in describing the elaborate idleness and the general imposture of this in- stitution. Yet the Cheque Office and all that concerns it might have been left out of the tale without in the least interfering with its general development. It is true that many of the characters are made to have something to do with it, but they could have played the same parts if they had been connected with anything else. The tale is really a some- what obscure family history, which is farther complicated by entangled love-affairs. There is a trial, of course, and unexpected discoveries are made. The schemer of the tale encounters a signal disappointment, and the honest, or rather, harmless, young hero meets, we cannot say with his reward, for he hardly deserves it, but with the happiness of which he is at least negatively worthy. In particular, he is delivered from the serious perplexity in which his love-making had seemed to be involved, and assigned to the best, or at all events the most suitable, of- the three young women to whom he makes love with impartial ardour in the course of the story. Mr. Listado can write well ; the dialogue is natural and lively, and the story has a certain interest about it, but it is far from being artistically conceived and carried out.
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