14 AUGUST 1875, Page 21

Alice Godolphin; and A Little Heiress. By Mary Neville. 2

vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—Is it unfair to take advantage of an author's confi- dence, when she tells us that she has published at an earlier ago than is usual for such ventures, and to express a wish that she had waited a little longer ? To tell the honest truth, those two stories are rather silly. Could anything be more silly, for instance—things more out- rageously absurd we have, of coarse, seen—than one of the chief incidents in the "Little Heiress," where the heroine accepts a lover whom she detests, and of whose mercenary and indeed wholly vile character she Is firmly persuaded, in order to induce a cousin, for whom she has no particular reason to Care, to give her a little love ?