31y Royal Father. By James Stanley Little. 3 vols. (F.
V. White and Co.)—There is nothing which critics preach so continuously, and yet to so little purpose, as the necessity of using some shading in the drawing of character. Mr. Little has not taken the lesson to heart, for of all the absolutely unredeemed villains that ever existed in fiction, Gaston Verschoyle is the worst, a prodigy all the more remarkable since he is the brother of a paragon of virtue. Neither deep study of Nature nor skilful construction of plot attracts us in Mr. Little's novel ; yet it has merits. One goes on reading it without exactly knowing why. The characters aro scarcely interesting, the incidents do not excite ; but there is a certain liveliness and intelligence about the hook which attract. What a curious bit of ill-luck it is that has made Mr. Little speak of a Colonial Bishop having been his hero's master at Wellington College, of all places in the world ! " For you must know," says the gentleman in question, " in early life my grandfather was a domine." (Is this the right spelling ? one seems to he used to see an " i " in the final syllable.) As Wellington College was founded in 1858, the Bishop's " early life " presents a chronological difficulty.
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