Dulcibel. By Gertrude M. Hayward. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—He
who reads this story—and it is a story which no one will find it difficult to read—will scarcely be able to avoid the conclusion that, at one time at least of her life, the heroine was a fool. A certain presumption of folly rests against any woman who falls in love with a lad three years younger than herself, and the presumption becomes almost a certainty when the lad has little to recommend him but a bright manner and a handsome face. But if the young woman had any common-sense, and been faithful to her first attachment, even though its object had attained the unusual age of, say, thirty, where would this story of Dulcibel have been ? And, as may be inferred from what we have said, it is a story of considerable merit. There is something peculiarly pathetic in the hopes with which the rough old soldier, Major Bultitaft, comforts himself about his ward, and in the dis- appointment which they meet with. The author, too, compels us to feel an interest in Chris Jocelyn himself, by her touching story of the last months of his life. Miss Hayward may with advantage revise her style. "Somewhat similarity of age" is not an admissible expression ; and we are disposed to question, too, the propriety of the metaphor in the following :—" The germs [of a deeper feeling] had been scattered and had perished. Not sufficient of them, even, had survived to interpret it." " Germs " can scarcely "interpret."
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