Christian's Mistake. By the Author of John Halifax, Gentleman_ (Hurst
and Blackett.)—John Halifax older and more learned is called Arnold Grey, and is Master of St. Bede's, Avonbridge. He marries beneath him, but his wife is a lady, and her difficulties with him, his sister, his first wife's sister, his nurse, and a former lover of her own, make up the volume. Arnold Grey, though as unnatural as the hero of whom he is clearly a new development, has in him something of sweet stateliness pleasant to read about, but for the rest the story is rubbish. All the household difficulties would have been terminated by the exercise of five minutes' common sense, and the imbroglio about the lover is simply absurd. Miss Muloch evidently thinks it a moral duty for a girl to tell her husband everything about anybody who may have courted her before—a rule which in actual life would produce nothing but useless embarrassment, while in this case Christian's morbid sensitiveness on the subject is utterly at variance with her whole character. There are people, however, who enjoy the analysis of senti- mental household troubles, and the Author of John Halifax, Gentleman, always writes well.
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