6 FEBRUARY 1886, Page 23

Glamour. By "Wanderer." (Sonnenschein.) —The hero of this pleasant and

readable book is a young man who is somewhat of a paragon without being a prig, and is sorely perplexed as to whether or not he shall marry a charming, sensible, and in every way desirable girl, because he cannot be Bare that he is in love with her. Though his own opinion inclines to the contrary, he is, nevertheless, quite open to conviction in the matter ; and as, on recounting his symptoms to, and taking counsel with, various friends, he finds they are all confident of his amatory condition being what it should be, he supposes they must be right, and marries accotdingly. Thanks partly to his own, and partly to his wife's merits, they get on very happily, except twice, when chance brings him in contact with one particular woman who has an irresistible fascination for him, and whom he no sooner sees, than he flirts with her in a manner most unbecoming to a married man. On both occasions, retribution follows swiftly. A. surreptitious kiss at a Richmond dinner indirectly causes the bank wherein he is a partner to be brought within an ace of putting up its shutters ; and the second flirtation ends in his being stabbed by order of the lady's irate husband. Banking and love affairs are so much intermingled, that we think the novel might appropriately have been termed, "A Banker's Romance." And the device of rescuing a bank on the verge of breaking, by making a lovely countess suddenly appear in Lombard Street to a staid old man of business, to whom she is a stranger, and insist on his accepting a cheque for 11120,000, seems an idea of sufficient ingenuity and originality to call for especial mention. The description of the extremely clannish Stunts, too, is amusing ; their intense belief in, and steadfast upholding of, every member of the clan, under all circumstances, is made very comical by the strong contrast which this self-complacency offers to the irritating effect produced by the family characteristics upon out- siders,—the reader included.