4 SEPTEMBER 1875, Page 22

In Love and in Hate. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—This is

a story of the Franco-Prussian war, penetrated throughout with a strong French feeling. The Germans are represented as brutal plunderers and mur- derers; their prisons are hells upon earth. The controversy about the behaviour of the two armies is an old one, and may now well be for- gotten. Nothing could be more uselessly irritating than to revive it as it is revived here, for the whole novel seems almost written for the purpose of holding up the Germans to hatred and contempt, and exciting pity for their adversaries. Every invading army is necessarily brutal, and no nation has proved it so conspicuously as the French, because none have had so many opportunities of proving it. The story is enlivened with a comic Irishman, who, however, does but feebly remind ns of Charles. Lever's Pats and Mikes ; and.it has its sentimental element in a love- story. It is completed by a narrative of the second siege of Paris and the proceedings of the Commune. We cannot see the good of inter- polating into history the sayings and doings of a few fictitious person- ages in whom it is not easy to take interest.