for twenty or thirty volumes, in the hands of a
competent master of the novelist's art ; but the author does not appear to be this, he has not oven akill enough to unravel the tangled skein of his own plot. The conse-
quence is, that before we are half-way through the story, all interest in the personages of it has evaporated, and we cannot even pretend to remember who several of them are. This is unfortunate, as we had contrived to feel a certain interest in the family of the drunken squire and his unfortunate belongings at Littledale. It is a great fault with this writer that he permits so many of his characters to relate their experi- ences at prodigious length, to the reader's intense weariness, somewhat after the manner of the people in last-century fictions ; only there unhappily ends the similarity. The writer's style is unpretentious and generally clear, but it lacks force and vivacity, —moreover, the moralising is persistent. Altogether, in spite of some merits, we cannot recommend Litiledale.
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