The Heirloom; or, the Descent of Vernwood Manor. By T.
Duthie- Lisle. 3 vols. (Gay and Bird.)—There is plenty of bad and in- different work in literature, especially in fiction, but there are few books in which a recklessly amiable reviewer cannot find at least something upon which he can, without glaring dishonesty, bestow faint praise. This book, however, is one of the few. The story is outrageously absurd, the characters do not bear the slightest resemblance to human beings; and the style is strained, ludicrously high-flown, and intolerably prolix. One of the people in the book receives a letter from his lawyers, and the incident is thus described :—" A. letter was handed to him which bore a London postmark, and was inscribed in that unmistakable style of caligraphy externally which admitted of no doubt in the recipient's mind that its place of emanation and origin was Messrs. Wyndham and Lumley'e office." The novel is, in a word, absolutely worthless.
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