Hubert Freeth's Prosperity. By Mrs. Newton Crossland. 3 vols. (Hurst
and Blackett.)—This is a painful story which, though written with some ability, does not attract the reader to follow it very atten- tively, or at least very eagerly, to the end. The troubles that embarrass the poor when they suddenly come into the possession of riches, and have to adapt their mode of life to new circumstances, have often been described, and are, in our judgment, anything but a pleasant subject. In some readers, at least, it excites the same sort of discomfort as the actual experience of such things would do. And then there is a marriage, entered upon by the heroine, not without some misgiving, producing the suspicion of wrong, and ending in sadness,—another dis- tastsful subject Mrs. Crossland will say, possibly, that we have no, right to find fault with her work for such a reason, that such things do happen, and that a novelist who would describe life truly must some- times at least choose subjects of this kind. The plea is good in itself, and against such a master of the- art as George Eliot no literary charge, at least, can be founded on the oppressive sadness which often characterises her work. But the ordinary novel must please, as we take it, and we, who in these columns have to deal for the most part with ordinary novels, must judge them by this standard. Mrs. Crossland can draw character with some force and precision ; she can conduct a dialogue ; lit short, she has all the power to make out of a good subject a very passably good novel.
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