Godfrey Helstone. By Georgina M. Craik. 3 vols. (Bentley.)— The
characters to whom Miss Craik introduces us in these volumes seem somewhat colourless and insipid. It may be said that they are all the more true to nature ; but it is difficult to feel much interest in any of them, unless it be in Godfrey Helstone's first wife, whom he marries from a sense of duty, and who dies after twenty years of wedded contentment, rather than happiness, leaving her husband with one child, a daughter, aged eighteen. Godfrey Helstone himself has never ceased to love Joanne Bereaford, the second daughter of a Derbyshire vicar, whom a month's fishing holiday has thrown in his way. No avowal has taken place ; he marries his invalid (and wealthy) orphan cousin, on finding that she has bestowed her love on him beyond recall ; and the whole story apparently comes to an end with her death at the close of the second volume. In the last volume the thread is resumed, not without some apparent effort; the widower meets Joanne, still Joanne Beresford, and two more marriages are arranged in due course. It seems hardly natural that after a break of twenty years Helstone should resume his relations with his old love on so exactly the same footing, almost the only difference being that instead of playing croquet themselves they watch their juniors play lawn-tennis. These remarks sufficiently indicate the nature and calibre cf the novel, which, at least, will not agitate the reader un- duly, and is written with the facility which experience gives.
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