The Baronet's Sunbeam. By A. C. W. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)—Surely,
if we may judge from this book, not only plots, but titles must be hard to find now-a-days. To call a man's favourite daughter his " sunbeam " is, doubtless, a pretty fancy in its way, but to have it repeated page after page fairly wears it out. And then the exquisite impropriety of connecting the man's title with it ! If he were old or young, or poor or rich, there might be something to say for it ; but what is there in his being a baronet ? And then, as to the plot. Mr. Bertram° runs off with the baronet's sister, and, after her death, seeks to be reconciled. He is repulsed, and, though the baronet repents of his wrath the next minute, is implacable. Then comes the elaborate scheme of revenge. He begins by coming down incognito to the same neighbourhood, where he takes a house and cultivates the acquaintance of the family. He contrives that his step-son should fall in love with the " Sunbeam " and marry her, the son having a wife, as he thinks, still alive, of which fact he informs the young lady, and so breaks her heart. By this time he has discovered that he has a daughter, with whom the baronet's son falls in love, being loved himself, but whom the arch-plotter wheedles into a marriage with a peer. So everyone either dies or lives in a broken- hearted sort of way ; and this very probable scheme of revenge is carried out. So the plot is about as absurd as the title ; the writing is a little better, though we are wearied with such things as the being told that Death is "that invisible but all powerful monarch, before whose stern decree young and old, rich and poor, must alike bow."
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