The Secret of the Princess. By Mrs. Sutherland Edwards. 2
vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—Mrs, Sutherland Edwards describes her book as " a tale of country, camp, court, convict, and cloister life in Russia." The descriptive element is stronger in it than the literary. As a tale it is not much. Plot and character do not go for so much as the opportunities for describing national habits and customs. A widow of high position and considerable wealth has a son and two daughters, and lives in the country. The son ultimately is killed at Sebastopol. One of the daughters falls in love with a Pole who le mixed up with some treasonable plot, and so gets banished to Siberia. So we get "country," "camp," "convict." Of the "court" there is not much; but Alexander II. appears on the scene, and is very kind to his old acquaintance, the widow. As for the "cloister," that is accounted for by the preacher Innokenti, a Russian noble who has buried himself in a monastery, and with whom the " secret of the Prin- cess " is somehow connected. Wo must own that we should have liked the story better if Innokenti had not been made to show such deplorable weakness in the last chapter.
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