Ashford. By Annie Blount. (Remington and Co.)—Ashford is the name
of a village and park belonging to a young and immensely rich widow, named Lady Helen Drummond. When the story opens, she has just arrived to take personal possession of her domain, thereby exciting,. or rather arousing (for there is nothing exciting about her proceedings, from first to last) the interest of the whole county. She has several suitors, and eventually she chooses one of them as her husband. In the meantime, she has been to several dinner-parties, has paid several morning calls, and has entertained her neighbours in her turn. At these feasts nothing happens except a prodigious flow of small-talk between hosts and guests which is set forth after an interminably wearisome fashion. There is a wicked baronet, who is also vastly agreeable, and a silly lord, who proves himself to be also wicked, by running away with the baronet's daughter, when he was engaged to another young lady. Further details of the wickedness, agreeableness, and silliness of these people are spared us ; we take their qualities to be as stated by our author- as facts because she says they are so; and we are happy to do so, lest we provoke her to prove them, and in so doing to expand her one volume into three. It is fair to add that though we cannot praise her matter, our author's style and grammar are really commendable, so that if we are not greatly amused, we aro never shocked. This is some evidence- that Miss Blount is capable of better things than Ashford.
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