Phcebe's Fortune. By Mrs. Robert O'Reilly. 3 vols. (Strahan.) —This
is a story which is, in every way, good to read. The author may be charged, indeed, with an unpractical optimism. But optimism is, after all, the best working faith that we can have. If we see the most hopeless of characters touched by the influence of better things, we have the suggestion of a hope that cannot, under any con- ceivable circumstances, do harm, may, on the contrary, do the greatest good. There is something really beautiful about the faith in the irre- sistible power of unselfishness and goodness which this story sets forth. At the same time, there is consummate good-sense in the way in which the working of this power is described. There are no instantaneous changes or miraculous transformations. The two Phoebes, who may be called the heroines of the story, are as unlike to each other in the circumstances of their lives as can well be imagined ; but they are alike in their truth and unselfishness, and they do, each in her own way, a work in making the world better which no one, we should hope, can read about without some profit, no one, we are certain, without much pleasure. The only fault that we have to find with the book is a purely literary objection to an occasional remin- iscence which it suggests, and which we confess to be anything but pleasing, of the strained rhetoric which disfigures some of Dickens's later books. It would not be right to conclude this notice without a word of praise for the very elegant form in which the publishers have brought out this book. The outside is unusually handsome, and it is a positive pleasure to turn over pages of such paper.
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