The Bantoffs of Cherryton. By Arthur Kean. (Smith, Elder, and
Co.)—This book states on its title-page that it is a story without a villain or a crime. That is perfectly true; and if it had added also that it is destitute of any study of character, of human nature, of plot, or any- thing worth reading, it would have defined itself still more accurately. Its people act, speak, and think as no living men and women would be likely to do ; its moralisings are sometimes of the common-place cynical and sometimes of the gushingly sentimental order ; its English is not always correct ; its so-called high-class gentlemen and ladies appear ignorant of the ordinary usages of society,—as, e.g., when one of them introdaces a peer's son to a lady with the words, 4' Permit me to present to you Lieutenant the Honourable Horace Varleigh ;" and it is decidedly doll. Unwilling to give a needlessly harsh judgment, we have sought carefully to discern some redeem- ing point that might counterbalance the manifold faults and silli- flosses of the work, but the search was to no purpose. Perhaps the chief sign of grace about the book is that its author has, at all events, sufficient good-sense to wish to hide her identity under a feigned name, for we think there can be no question as to the female sea of "Arthur Kean."
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