Mr. Orde's Grandchildren. By C. S. Lowndes. (Nisbet.)— It is
a pity that this story is so tediously long, for many of the characters in it, and particularly the girl-characters, are really well drawn. There is plenty of family happiness in it, but there is also plenty of family misery ; although fortunately there are "little hands to make a bridge over the gulf of coldness and anger that separated the present and the past." Mr. Orde is a proud man who has ceased to have dealings with his widowed daughter, Mrs. Danvers, because she married a man who was connected with "business," and who, after he became a bankrupt, even entered into a business partnership. At the time this story opens, the families of both Mrs. Danvers and of her deceased brother, Julian Orde, are living within a visiting distance of each other. But the pride of Mr. Orde—who, as represented in the illus- trations in this little volume, bears a fantastic resemblance to Mr. Gladstone—still prevents his son's children, who live with him, from being on terms of intimacy with their cousins. This little book tells how the good-heartedness, and perhaps the delicate health, of Julian, one of these son's eons, and the adventurous and boyish spirit of another, Sydney, ultimately bring about a recon- ciliation between the two families; how Julian dies, Sydney is temporarily lost, and Caryl Denvers takes the place of his dead cousin in their grandfather's affection. The story is prettily and naturally told, and the lessons which it teaches are the soundest ; but, as already said, it is too long.
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