Spiders and Flies. By Mrs. Hartley. 2 vols. (Chapman and
Hall.) —The spiders, or rather the spider, in this story, is one Margery Doveton, better known as Miss Barlow's niece; the flies are, we might almost say, the human race, at all events that portion of it—sweet- hearts, relations, girl-friends, and servants—who come within reach of the " strange and subtle fascination " of her presence. All the requisite processes and manoeuvres for the development of her plot Mrs. Hartley describes by terms applicable to what she learnedly calls " arachnids," each as "gossamers," " wobs," weavings," " threads and counter- threads," "broken meshes," and the like. After a somewhat chequered career at home (the details of her wickedness, and of the ruin, disaster, and broken hearts it caused, filling, in fact, the two volumes), the heroine leaves England, where, as Mrs. Hartley mildly says, she had "painful recollections." We will give the closing scene in her own words. She has accompanied a missionary bishop, and " in the Gaut Hills of Southern India, she is living with one great object in view of bringing the heathen to a knowledge of the truth Like the wingless spider [here is a long description of it], so is Margery Doveton, despite her misguided past, striving to attach her frail, invisible fabric to the Rock of Ages." We shall find it hard to forgive Mrs. Hartley for bringing Christian missionaries into such unmerited dis- repute.
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