By far the most conspicuous figure in Only a Governess,
by Rosa N. Carey (Bentley), is the hero, Launcelot, who would, we think, have been more appropriately fitted with the name of another of the Knights of the Round Table. What he suggests to us is Sir Galahad in a mild form, adapted to modern ideas,—that is to say, a pure and high-minded man who, though resigning no innocent domestic joys or comforts, devotes himself to helping lame dogs over stiles—of course, we are speaking metaphorically— as his prototype did to riding about the world, " shattering evil customs everywhere ;" and if, as seems not impossible, the author is inclined to think that this helping of lame dogs is the proper nineteenth-century development of the spirit whereby Sir Galahad was animated, she must permit us • to observe that it is, at any rate, a somewhat tame manifestation thereof. However, her knightly, unselfish hero, who is perpetually acting delis ex machina to somebody or other, has real, sterling, good stuff in him to win esteem and admiration ; and we are sure that all readers will take leave of him with cordial wishes for his happiness with the wife whom he has educated and watched over since her childhood. The title of the book made us fancy that we were to have a heroine in the slighted and despised- victim line ; but that supposition was quite a mistake, for at her first appearance (which, by-the-bye, does not take place till the end of the first volume) she is living very happily with employers who treat her like one of the family, and there she remains until she exchanges their protection for that of a husband. A thin veil of mystery (easily penetrated by the ingenious reader) surrounds her for a while; but instead of being the adventuress which mysterious governesses in novels are apt to be, she is a bright, winsome, young Irishwoman, whose general popu- larity and facility for getting on with people makes it wonderful that she should have experienced such difficulty as she did in that way with her husband and his sister,—one feels she must have had a singularly unfortunate knack of showing her worst side to them more than to any one else. There is a child- heroine in the first volume, who is afterwards left very much out of sight till she reappears just before the end, to be married, and who might well have been seen more of during the inter- mediate period, as she is not less interesting than the title-r81e lady. There is care and conscientious work in the book ; it has a good moral tone, and is pleasant and readable, oven though it has not sufficient story and incident to fill three volumes satisfactorily, and may possibly be a trifle milk-and-watery.
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