Count Renneberg's Treason, by Harriette E. Burch (Religions Tract Society),
may be commended as a good book for boys, not because it would appear to have been specially written to suit their intelligence and interests, but because it is a well-told story of heroism. In it we have reproduced the essentially religious struggle in the Netherlands between Spain and the Beggars of the Sea. The villain of the piece is Count Renneberg, Governor of Groningen, who betrays his trust, and throwe over the Prince of Orange. He is in reality a weakling, and the tool of his sister Cornelia, the Baroness Monceau, whose charming waiting-maid, Sabina Van Eyck, is as mach of a heroine as can be expected in a book which has a decided religious purpose. Leopold Austria, Sabina's protector, who in the end becomes her husband, is an admirable sketch of a patriotic soldier of the times of Parma and Orange ; while a still better portrait is that of Herman Klafz000, the repentant representative of that brigandage which was the outcome of the civil war in the Netherlands. The siege of Steenwick, the failure of which brings ruin to Count Renneberg, is graphically and, indeed, brilliantly described. Altogether, the author of Count Renneberg'a Treason deserves to be heartily congratulated. She has written an admirable historico-religions romance.
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