The Rosary; a Legend of Wilton Abbey. By William Gilbert.
(William Freeman.)-Alicia Longspde, abbess of Wilton, on her death-bed asks permission of the Bishop of Salisbury to make a written confession that her death may conduce to the furtherance of religion, and on the Christ- mas Eve after her death it is read to the sisterhood. Of course the groat fault of a book written on such a plan is that the tale is obviously not a confession designed to edify, but a novelette designed to amuse. Still, waiving that inevitable criticism, the little tale is a very clever picture of a lady of the fifteenth century. The levity consequent on the absence of any means of employing the mind such as we now have in literature is very well brought out. A young woman, left alone by her husband for any reason, however imperative, for any length of time, could hardly help flirting, and when the news of his death reaches her, the strange mixture of vanity and remorse, religion and superstition, which takes the young and wealthy widow into a convent, is most hamorously yet naturally painted. Few writers of fiction can keep themselves so completely out of sight in their stories as Mr. Gilbert does.
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