CURRENT LITERATURE • The Dove in the Eagle's Nest. By
the Author of the Heir of Redclyffe. (Macmillan.)—A pretty story nicely told, with an interesting plot and a pleasant moral. We would give it higher praise if we justly could, for indeed it is a charming little tale, but every one of these epithets is honestly intended. Miss Yonge has no business in the Middle Ages, and particularly in the robber cycle of Germany, which she either does not understand or does not choose to paint, but being there, she has described one of her own heroines with such grace and sweetness that we are reluctant to be compelled to disbelieve in her. The woman she has described would in that day either have surrendered herself so absolutely to her husband's guidance as to be weak eagle, not dove in the eagle's nest, or have been a married nun, with a priest for deity and a round of formulas for expression of faith. Christina, as painted, could not have been, least of all could she have dared the really splendid device by which she saves hor husband's cousin from murder at the risk of her babies' lives. He is to be dropped down the oubliette, when she places in his hands her own babies, lords of the house, and bids him carry them down and show them to his men. The same character would have been more natural to-day, amid home scenes and people of the nineteenth century, but still few except Miss Yonge could have told that story so.
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