The Trivial Round. By Sarah S. M. Clarke (Mrs. Pereira).
(Nisbet and Co.)—These "Chapters of Village Life," drawn simply and faithfully from Nature, are distinctly effective. Ash- leigh is a country village, and we hear of the sins and weaknesses, the virtues and the good qualities, the fall and the rising again, of some of its inhabitants. Among the most vigorous pictures is that of the drunkard, Mrs. Linden. For her, in Mrs. Pereira's story, severely true in this respect to Nature, there is no rising again. Wilfred Blunt, on the other hand, does struggle at last out of the slough, though not without losing much that he is never able to recover. There are other good sketches,—Miss Dinwiddie, with her bitter tongue; Stephen Ramadge, the reck- less blacksmith ; and the Masons, vulgar and kindly, with their hopeless aspirations after gentility, are among them.
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