Landing a Prize. By Mrs. Edward Kennard. 3 vols. (F.
V. White.)—Mrs. Kennard transports us in this novel from the
"Shires " to a Norwegian salmon-river. But her characters are
much the same. Ccelum non, animunt mutant. The hero is a young man with a fortune, and we have, of course, an adventurer
who makes his market out of him. Then there are two love adventures. One is with a married woman, unhappily mated with an ugly and odious husband. This threatens at one time to end badly ; but catastrophes of this kind are not in our author's line.
Then comes the legitimate love. This time an Anglo-Norwegian damsel is the heroine. The affair is prettily told, and is quite up to the best level of Mrs. Kennard's writing. But we cannot admire the melodramatic end of the adventurer. The avenging thunderbolts ought to be reserved for very great occasions indeed.
The salmon-fishing scenes are described with a good deal of vigour. On the whole, this is a good specimen of the writer's power ; but it would have been better without the episode of Mrs. Thompson. This omitted, we should have had something like Mr. Vicary's charming story of "A Danish Parsonage."
Previous page
