Like Lost Sheep : a Riverside Romance. By Arnold Gray.
3 vols. (Ward and Downey.)—There is nothing specially remarkable about this story. There is a well-born "villain in it who, as is usual in a certain class of fiction, is a baronet, and a low-born villain who is a hackney-carriage driver. And there is a hero who is a gentleman miller, and a heroine who is the wicked baronet's daughter by an un- acknowledged marriage. There are minor characters of the usual stamp. Two murders are provided for the entertainment of readers, and there are lesser villainies in plenty. The story is told with some vigour ; one or two scenes—that, for instance, where Becky Oakum is betrayed by " Rackety Nell "—are worthy of special praise. As a whole, the novel is not below the average, though certainly not above it. But the author has thought fit to spice it with a great quantity of personalities. There is no mistaking the place for which " Coverley- upon-Dane " is intended ; indeed, the disguise is in one or two places dropped, either by forgetfulness or malice, and one of the neighbour- ing villages is called by its proper name. These personalities are not amusing at all ; they have nothing to do with the development of the plot ; they are, without exception, dull and tedious. A number of decent, well-educated gentlefolk, whom the present writer happens to know (one of them is now dead), are gratuitously insulted, without even the poor excuse of being made fan of. The person who writes under what is presumably the pseudonym of "Arnold Gray," has made a deplorable blunder by this exhibition of a folly which it is difficult not to call spiteful.
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