Grace's Fortune. 3 vols. (Strahan.)—A young lady gives up her
fortune, about which there has been some little mystification, to save the honour of her father, who has speculated with and lost a ward's money. So she cannot be married. But the author of the speculation becomes rich, and opportunely dying, leaves to the lawyer, or rather the son of the lawyer, who recommended it to the father, a like sum. The son of the lawyer gives it to the young lady, and she is married after all. This might have made a passable story for a magazine ; but the three volumes into which it is here spun out are intolerably thin stuff. We shall content ourselves with one specimen of the style. The scene is laid near Oxford, as being, we suppose, familiar to the writer. Here is a description of the High Street :—" Immediately in front rose the chipped, crumbling, time- stained walls of a fine old college, with its chapel nestling by its side ; on the right and left were other colleges, either boldly facing the road, or modestly retired within large and sheltering gardens, chapels, churches, museums, theatres, as far as the eye could reach in this noble and unrivalled street." There are five colleges in the High Street, all of them "boldly facing the road," none of them with chapels nestling by their side, which indeed it is not the habit of Oxford chapels to do ? But where are the museums and theatres ? How many theatres are there in Oxford? and do they act the legitimate drama ?
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