A Leal Lass. By Richard Ashe King ("Basil "). 2
vols. (.Ward and Downey.)—This is a distinctly clever and certainly
most entertaining novel. The " leal lass" is May Beresford, daughter of a country Vicar, who ekes out his income by taking pupils. Among these pupils is a certain Hugh Grey—one of the Hog,shire Greys, as the Vicar's wife delights to tell her friends— and Mr. King's novel is the story of how Hugh and May loved each other, and how it fared with their love. These lovers, the kindly, broad-minded Vicar, with his habit of cynical speech, and the Irish gardener, Con, are admirable portraits of the pleasing kind ; Fred, the Vicar's son, whose meanness and selfishness are only too visible to his father, but whom his mother and sister idolise, as mothers and sisters will, however contemptible the idol, is a powerfully drawn character of the baser sort. Fred gets into a frightful scrape, and May is on the brink of sacrificing herself to get him out of it, when a kinder fortune intervenes. This is the story, sufficiently interesting in itself, and excellently well told.
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