8 FEBRUARY 1873, Page 21

Cyrilla. By the Baroness Tautphceus. (Bentley.)—This is a new edition

of the best of Baroness Tautphceus's novels. "The Initials" is better known, and it is free from the tedium and repetition which are the principal faults of Cyrilla; but it is not so clever or so various a story, nor has it the same touch of real passion, or the lifelikeness which is imparted by that touch. A certain amount of tiresomeness seems to be inseparable from all pictures of German life, and all stories of German sentiment, in both of which there is a mixture of the ideal and the prosaic -that achieves being funny by dint of its surprising seriousness. The "highborn" and "gracious" young persons who perform the inter- minable love-drama of Cyrilla are very characteristic specimens of this combination. Their respective positions are created by a sequence of entirely prosaic circumstances and considerations, while their behaviour is of the most ideal and transcendental description. The story is certainly interesting, but were it not for the plentiful sprinkling of -humour shaken over it by the President and 1■161anie, his wife, and the .aigre-doux humours of Baroness Walden and her platonic admirer, the reader would lack patience to follow the fortunes of Rupert and Cyrilla to the happy ending which the author has very wisely sub- stituted for the tragical conclusion of the book in its original form. This new edition is in fact almost a new version, so completely is the story transformed, and so extensively is it rewritten.