Ethel Mildmay's Follies. By the Author of " Petite's Romance.'
3 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—Miss Ethel Mildmay falls in love with a certain O'Neill, but then, as it unfortunately happens, he is not the right O'Neill, but an impostor whom an intriguing mother has foisted into the succession to the title and estates. The real man is a some- what brusque personage, and elderly, for so forty seems to eighteen. Before long, forty and eighteen, Miss Ethel having shortened her father's life by one of her follies, settle down to play the role of guardian and ward, guardian sternly struggling to conceal his love, and ward, furi- ously wroth with guardian, but wroth after such a fashion that the experienced novel-reader shrewdly suspects the anger to be near akin to love. Things, however, seem to be getting smooth. Proofs of the imposture have been discovered (nothing more improbable than these said proofs have we ever seen), when another of Miss Ethel's " follies " puts everything wrong. At the last moment, when the reader is in despair of seeing the right triumph, lo ! guod minime reris, help is at hand. Every detail is disposed of in a most summary fashion by an old lunatic, who has been kept alive far beyond the natural term of man's life for this purpose, and Ethel Mildmay's follies come to an end when she changes her name. The book is pleasantly written, with some very lively sketches of society in Nice, in fact is a quite readable story, which we do not hesitate to recommend.
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