The Secret of the Dragon. By M. Ir. Pandered. (Harpers.
6s.)— There is a great deal about the mysticism of alchemy in this novel, the main subject of which is a romantic old home in the country inhabited by the last male representative of an old family and his only daughter. The reader will find it hard to believe that at the present day even the inhabitants of the most remote country houses ever talk the language of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Is it possible that a modern heroine would habitually make use of the second person singular and speak in the following manner ? -
" Oh, I know not. In faith, I have lived so much alone, dreamed so much, thought so much, fancied so much, that I cannot tell whether the dim forms mine eyes have seen and the sounds mine ears have heath be true sights and sounds or whether my mind bath cast them, like shadows, on the air about me."
The machinations of the villain and their frustration by the hero disguised as a gardener make entertaining reading, but the end is rather too much like that of an old-fashioned comedy in which the villain is converted and the characters take hands in pairs and come forward to bow to the audience.
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