By Love and Law : the Story of an Honourable
Woman. By Lizzie Aldridge. 3 vols. (Smith and Elder.)— The title of this story is not a happy ono, and does not in any way suggest the real subject which Miss Aldridge has taken. The " law " is not, as one might suppose, the statute law of marriage and divorce, but the higher law of truth and right. Lois is one of four sisters, daughters of a certain Major, whose "little tempers" are graphically described. Sho works at art, not a little against her father's will, at a certain studio in "Great Turner Street," street and studio being unquestionably drawn from the life. All these scenes are excellent. The choice of two lovers is presented to her, and she unhappily inclines to the worse, taken in—as, indeed, the author very skilfully contrives that the reader should be for a while —by the superficial grace and sentiment of an unstable and selfish man. Then comes the sad record of her unhappy married life, and then, again, the record of her brave struggles to support herself and the children
whom a worthless husband has left dependent upon her. The art which she had learnt in her old days is now followed for a livelihood, and nothing could be better than the way in which her efforts are described. As a picture of artist-life, taken from a somewhat unfamiliar point of view, the volume has no little interest ; and there is appropriately some- thing quite artistic in the way in which the characters are gradually made to stand out prominently on the scene.
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