Slibiga Lockwood. By Noell Radecliffe. Three volumes. (Hurst and Blackett.)—This
novel is a very extraordinary one. The subject is original sin, which the writer appears to regard as synonymous with adultery. At all events that is what the story is about—the relations• of ill-matched spouses, one or both of whom become fit subjects for the Court presided over by Sir James Wilde. This seems a narrow view of original sin, which might surely have been equally well illustrated from some other form of human misdoing. As it is, we admit that every one prone to evil, but not to that particular form of it, and cannot think " Sybilla Lockwood " at all fitted for general reading. Three culpable adulteries and an innocent bigamy are really too much for one story,. and there is positively no single incident on which anything turns. beside them. The book is a mistake in point of conception. Other- wise the execution, though not brilliant, is singularly faultless. The motives and the conduct of the different characters bear a rations] relation to each other.
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