77th Woman That Shall Be Praised. By Hilda Reay. (Samuel
Tinsley.) .—An heiress who comes by her own after her inheritance has been usurped by some extremely vulgar and disagreeable people, and a lady who is rewarded for being very good and gentle by the hand of a lover, whom she reclaims from cynicism and general disbelief to better things, am the heroines of this book. We are decidedly of opinion that in this case the estate was a more desirable possession than the lover. We cannot think that the admirable Persia was at all adequately rewarded by the love of Bernard Stow. If this novel is a first effort, it is fairly promising, bet the authoress cannot be congratulated on the skilful management of a plot. We may take the liberty of informing her that she quite misreads Hazael's exclamation, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ?" when she supposes it to express any disgust or horror of what he was destined to do. Possibly she would have seen as much, if -she had not misquoted it. The words are "this great thing." Hazael was probably delighted at the laying-waste, with the customary circum- stances of cruelty, the country of his enemies, and was only doubtful whether he were not of too low a station to allow him to cherish such grand expectations.
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