The Tower Gardens. By Miss Alldridge. (F. Y. White and
Co.) —This is a very bright and readable novel, leaving in every chapter an impression on the critic's mind that it ought to be even better than it is. Miss Alldridge has keen observation, much power of descrip- tion, and considerable ability in dialogue, but her analysis of character is not thorough enough. Every individual figure tends to degenerate into caricature. The catastrophe does not actually happen even with the widow, whose governing principle in life is devotion to her husband's memory, which she shows by starving on an impossible
farm, because he had thought it would pay ; but you always feel the danger. The portraits of Jessie,' the heroine, and Alison, her much more interesting sister, who has a talent for seeing the poetry in old associations, such as to the minds of antiquaries cling about London streets, are very firm and clear, but the men are not quite so distinct. Only their feeblenesses are painted thoroughly well, as by one who had watched, without quite understanding. The plot, which depends on a father who has pretended to be dead, and comes back with a large business and an alias, is clever, but we failed altogether to become interested in the hero, MacCarruthers. If he had died of his cancer, as we rather think he would have done, cancer from a blow indicating a radically bad constitution, Jessie's loss would not have been great. The story, however, is lively and natural throughout, and its central scene—the district round the Tower—described with appreciation. By the way, does Miss Alldridge really think the East-enders so hostile to respectables as she says, or is she confusing the " hoodlams " with the general population
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