Fontenoy." To readers who remember, as we trust many of
our readers do, that brilliant book, this is very high praise. There is no particular purpose in the book, except it be to show up the emptiness of the pre- tentious schools of which " Cramleigh College " is the type, and to demonstrate the fact that a lad whose stupidity is the despair of his relatives may grow up into a very respectable and sensible man. Nor is there any particular plot. Events go on without anything of the mature of a surprise or catastrophe. Of course one knows from the beginning that the impostor, Dr. Chatfield Jonah—whom yet it seems hard to call an impostor, so skilfully are the lights and shadows mingled in his character—will come to grief; and we recognise at once in Mr. Ffarindon, the director of bubble companies, the in- strument of his punishment. The love affairs, too, go on pretty smoothly. The poor lieutenant who refuses so nobly to drag down into poverty the woman he loves comes badly off. It is quite right that a man with nothing but his pay should not marry, but why not kill the rich uncle ? It is so cheap to give a man wealth on paper, and the gallant sailor really deserved it. But the novel does very well without purpose or plot. The descriptions are capital, the incidents amusing or exciting, as the ease may be, and the characters well drawn. And—rare virtue!—Mr. Belcher quotes his Latin correctly, and accen- tuates his Greek. We have only to wish that he would spare us ill- considered opinions on subjects which, whether he understands them or no, cannot be properly discussed, and still less properly dogmatised about, in a novel.
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