16 OCTOBER 1875, Page 22

The Village Coquette. From the German of Friedrich Spielhagen by

J. L. Laird. (Chapman and Hall.)—This is a curious study of nature. The beautiful, almost soulless Bertha is brought to something like human steadfastness and feeling by the savage discipline which may be used to subdue an animal. The cruel wound which, at the bidding of a wise woman, the lover whom she is ready to deceive inflicts upon her, works in a strange way on her limited nature, and she is vanquished by that which would have roused a being of higher faculties into irrecon- cilable hostility. The plot is well worked out, and it is founded upon what may well be, if we are to judge from analogies, a real, though a rare phase of nature.