9 JUNE 1894, Page 27

Markham Howard. By J. Reale. 3 vols. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—

The painful situation which is the motive of this story is described with no little force. The hero is a filius nultius, and nothing can reconcile him to the hardship of the fact; he is even; one might think, a little hard, when the story comes to its development, in his unforgiving insistence on it. Still, we have little but praise for the author's treatment of his subject. The "sisters," too, are well-drawn characters, and the relation between them and the hero is worked carefully out to an interesting denouement. The book is written with a literary ability above the average. Mr. Heale's name is not known to us, nor does he mention any earlier work on his title-page. If this is a first book it is more distinctly a success than we should otherwise have thought.