Lion - Hearted. By the Author of The Gambler's Wife. 2 vols.
(Samp- son Low, Son, and Marston.)—The two first chapters of this novel are so very superior to the rest that they cause a sense of disappointment in the reader, which is likely to affect unfavourably his judgment of the work. The Rev. Mr. Fielden, the clergyman who is not vicious exactly, but has the tastes of an idler, who likes billiards and cigars and cards and sauntering, but does not like clerical work, and is always poor, and for a clergyman rather disreputable in consequence, is excel- lently drawn, and his anxious submissive wife is also a good sketch. There is nothing else in the novel which deserves praise or blame. Bona is a character so culpably weak as to be unpleasant, and the heroine, however lion-hearted, is from first to last a mere puppet, made a tool of by her uncle, aid dancing attendance on Bona, who would have justly disgusted any sensible person in a week. The result is an unsatisfactory tale, quite as good as the run of novels, but not pleasant nor powerful enough to please by mere force.
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