in Spite of All. By Helen Boult. (Newby.)—There is a
certain satisfaction in finding that there are readers—if, indeed, we may argue, from seeing a book, that it has or will have readers—who still take delight in a love story pure and simple. Here we have love-making, with misunderstandings, jealousies, difficulties, pecuniary or otherwise, estrangements, reconciliations without end, or rather without end till the moderate compass of a single volume is filled. We cannot say that the characters have much merit, or, indeed, possess anything by way of disposition, good or bad, except the power of falling in love and getting into and out of the various entanglements which falling in love is apt to produce. The entanglements are serious ; but there is a heroine, and, as she is enchantingly beautiful, admirably virtuous, and exceedingly clover, and has, moreover, a fortune of thirty thousand a year in reserve, we feel sure that all will end happily. Miss Boult might apply with advantage Count Cavonr's famous saying, "Anyone can govern with a state of siege." There is no merit in getting the cart out of the slough when you have such a Hercules as "thirty thousand a year " ready to show himself.
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