So Heri ; or, "A Cycle of Cathay." By Jessie
Weston. (Eden, Remington, and Co.)—The writer has depicted with some force the story of a half-caste, a New Zealand half-caste, and how the Maori blood eventually triumphed over the white. By isolating her in thought, even from those she knows and loves best, the heroine is made to stand out all the clearer in her independence of character. She is not really understood by those round her, and the writer insists perhaps rather too much on this. The com- bination of cultured good-breeding and savage hopelessness of a higher life is rather too smooth to be completely real. The suddenness of the catastrophe seems too improbable. Mary Balmain, is, however, a fine woman, and, for all that we know, may be taken from life. The other characters are by no means so successful, and do not rise above the ordinary level of unreal and indistinct characters. The writer seems to have exhausted herself upon her scenery and her New Zealand heroine,—to have nothing left, in fact, to dress the rest of her figures in.
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