Pericles Brum : a Satirical Romance. By Austin Pember. (J.
and R. Maxwell.)—This is another forecast of the future, taking the turn not of scientific development, the favourite topic of romancers, but of political advance. Pericles is the son of the Duke de Pere, and is kidnapped by an ardent democrat of the time, to be wrought into the chosen instrument for destroying the aristocracy, the Church, —in fact, society generally. How this is done is the story which is told in this volume. It is done with mach cleverness ; but as Lord Granville said of Lord Salisbury's charges against the Ministry, there is not enough shading in it. And there are some very obvious imita- tions. The "Rev. Paul Thicksides," Vice-Chancellor of the Univer- sity of Oxford, who " in face and form was an amiable Pickwick " (surely it is of the essence of a Pickwick to be amiable), is a gentle- man whom we have met before in fiction not wholly unlike to this, and his sermon preached before the University is another familiar acquaintance. It is well written, however, and so is the rival dis- course, delivered, more Academico, by the Rev. Gerald Arbuthnot, the sole surviving representative of Oxford orthodoxy. After all, there is little to be said about Pericles Brum, except that it is clever and young.
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