Ram Dare. By Charles Felix. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—The man
from whom the tale takes its title is an Indian merchant, located in
some one of the manufacturing towns of the North. He is a villain of the deepest dye, a profligate, a forger, and a murderer. The interest of the novel lies in the question whether be will succeed in seducing the beautiful Clarice Orsini, to whose painting of "Judith and Holo- fernes" we are introduced in the first chapter. He has a rival in the person of Clarice's employer—for she is the governess of one Maud Sut- cliffe—a villain not less deep-dyed, except that he is white instead of dusky. There may be readers to whom this sort of thing is interesting. It forms the staple, we know, of the stimulating romances which find favour with those whose culture just enables them to road fluently, and to whom literature can appeal only through emotions which are base, if not vicious. We are bound to state our opinion of it frankly, whether
it comes out in a halfpenny journal, or in a well-got-up three-volume novel, and this is,—that, except under the most noble treatment, this is a bad subject for fiction, and that in Ram Dass that bad subject is badly treated.
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