The Lover Fugitives. By John Finnemore. (C. Arthur Pearson. Gs.)—Much
gratitude is due to Mr. Finnemore for having pro. duced a capital novel with a historical background, in which, though there is much serious sword-play, plenty of blackguardly conduct, and a good proportion of love-making and consequent romance, there is also something better. The hero, George Ferrara, and the heroine, Cicely Plumer, add to all other charms the grace of humanity, and they enlist the reader's sympathies by their kindness to the rebels who are being hunted down by Jeffreys after the Monmouth Rising. Their deeds of mercy—all the more attractive in them seeing that they are not themselves of the Duke's party—bring them into danger. 'But other danger threatens Cicely through her fatal attraction for an unprincipled nobleman. The complications of the plot are excruciating, but they are skilfully managed so as to avoid over-much perplexity for the reader, and all comes right in the end. A crowning merit of the book is that the people talk English much as we do in the present day. There is no attempt at a seventeenth-century idiom, and we enjoy the variety of character and incident with- out the irritating drag of an artificial or archaic style.
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