ONE-VOLUME NOVELS WORTH READING.*

HACKNEYED as the theme of An Arranged Marriage un- doubtedly is, Dorothea Gerard's skill has enabled her to

impart to it so much of the zest of novelty that no unwelcome flavour of staleness intervenes to diminish the keen interest wherewith readers look on at the familiar spectacle of parents endeavouring to constrain their children's affections to flow in a parentally selected channel. The mother and father of the young couple to be brought together are the most note- worthy figures; and the contrast presented by these two (whose delineation is really excellent) may be compared, not inaptly, to that which would be seen if a delicate Italian greyhound were to go into partnership with a rough British bulldog for hunting purposes. Luigi's mother, proud, refined, and high-bred, is an impoverished Principessa, whose intense sensitiveness on the score of "noble-born poverty" has kept her for twenty-one years shut up in her house in order to conceal her reduced circumstances from every prying eye.

" Inside these walls," she says, " I continue to reign sovereign, outside of them I should be a caricature. It is no one's business to remark that in my solitude I feed myself with chocolate pastilles instead of with meat ; but it would be every one's business to note that the covering of my carriage. cushions is moth-eaten the moment I show myself on the high road. So long as I remain invisible I shall be revered. Possibly I may be thought eccentric, but eccentricity is quite reconcilable with dignity." Endowed with a swift insight into the subtle workings of human nature that seems sometimes almost uncanny, and having strong concentration of purpose and determination, her qualities are altogether of a kind that might easily have been manipulated into the representation of a malignant old witch ; though, as it is, she is a likeable personage. Her fellow-conspirator, Brand, the father of Annie, is a self-made millionaire, plebeian and masterful, going through life with his eyes fixed on the end he means to reach, treading underfoot whatever comes between him and it, and owing his fortune less to special aptitude for any one vocation than to a sort of coarse-grained vigour and ruthless, in• domitable energy wherewith he has overcome obstacles and conquered the world by sheer force. Widely sundered as the poles in most respects, these two are, nevertheless, united in the common object they have at heart ; and in considering this object, no thought of their children's mental or

moral fitness for one another enters their minds for an instant, and their motive of action is solely that stated with characteristic bluntness by Brand when broaching the matter to the Principessa :—

" You hare got a son and I have got a daughter ; your son has got a title, and my daughter has got a fortune. Your son will certainly require a fortune in order to enjoy his title comfortably, and I am determined, for purposes of my own, that my daughter shall get a title. Do you follow me ? What do you think, eh? Don't you think we could come to an understanding ? "

Their views of the best method of attaining the desired end vary according to their diverse natures; for while the imperious Brand would employ coercion, and send straight- way for Luigi and Annie and order them to marry, the astute Principessa is horrified at so clumsy a suggestion, and insists on the adoption of wiles and ruses at which she is an adept, and which are wholly foreign to his ideas. As the children walk innocently into the trap pre- pared, her efforts are on the verge of success when suddenly she is outwitted by a woman even cleverer than herself, and lets the secret of the deep-laid plot be surprised by an enemy, who immediately opens the eyes of the blind young people to the parental manoeuvres. Considering how satisfactory the result was proving to be, we hardly think the cause need have been resented as vehemently as it was; and we doubt whether wrath at parental interference was quite sufficient justification for the violent wrenching apart of hearts that ensues, and would have involved a tragical termination but for a, provi- dentially opportune death from heart-disease which, though certainly occurring at an extraordinarily convenient moment, yet in no way violates laws of probability. The first and last chapters have so little to do with the rest of the book, that we are tempted to fancy they may perhaps be fragments fitted

• (1.) An Arranged 3farriage. By D railer Gerard. London : Longmans and Co.—(2.) The Horeemnn s Word. By Neil Rey. London : Macmillan and 0o.—(3.) Miss Grace of Ail Sonia. By W. E. Tirehuct. London: Heiremann. —(4.) The Days of Old Lang Mae. By Ian Mac'aren. London : Hodder a- d Stonglit,o.—(5.) Hiatres, Dorothy Marrtn. By J. 0. Snaith. London : A. D. limes ant Co.

in from some other work that never got beyond the embryo stage.

The Horseman's Word may be likened in one respect to cres containing valuable metal whose extraction is only to be effected by so costly a process as to make the smelter doubt whether it will pay him to treat them ; for there is consider-

able danger that the unmerciful amount of Scotch dialect in the book may daunt readers at the outset, and, by de- terring them from going further, cause them to lose an original and striking story which—notwithstanding some crudeness of construction suggestive of a first attempt—will repay perusal, and promises well for future work from the same pen. The action takes place amongst rugged plough- men and fishermen and their womenfolk, superstitions and half-savage, who form the population of a Scotch "farm- town " and the neighbouring fishing-village. And the forcibly

drawn principal character is a churlish, singularly ill-starred individual, known in the farm-town as the Kelpy—(we do not altogether see the appositeness of applying this name to

a human being, when the goblin whence it is derived is a horse)—and in the fishing village as the " Ill-fitter,"—i e , an accursed creature whose presence in any boat is sufficient to

destroy it. That he had qualities of a kind to explain the readiness of the unsophisticated villagers to credit him with supernatural attributes can easily be imagined from what is shown of his power to reduce unmanageable horses to sub- mission, and exert a strange, apparently involuntary, sort of

mesmeric influence over a young lady ; but the unattractive unamiability that distinguishes his portrait might have been lessened with advantage, we think, by representing him as

making some kind of effort to overcome the general dislike and awe with which he is regarded. The book's title refers to a secret society amongst ploughmen in Scotland which, if really existing, is sufficiently curious and little known to make the

description of it worth quoting at length :-

"' What are your ideas about the Horseman's Word, John ? ' she asked, when the old fellow had come to the end of some of his stories.—` The Horseman's Word! Jean hae been tellin' you o' that, as wed as a' thing else ! Deed, I dins ken what to think o"t. It's some kind o ploughman's masonry, to mak' lads real ploughmen, and gie them skill to guide their horse.'—' Is instruc-

tion given them in a practical way ? Hout, ay; they're by ways o' learnin' them a hantle that should be o' use. It's like a skule amon' them ; but whether their teachers be worth their saut or ken muckle beyond what may be kent by ony ither body, is mair than I can tell. The only proof we hae o' that, is what kind o' horse- men they turn out ; and some o' them are real guid, ith rs real bad.'—' But are they a secret society ? Have they signs by which

to recognise each other ? Why do they speak of a Word ? I'se warrant they hae secrete. They would tear a body's een out that tried to take them frae them. Ay, and signs as weel ; they bas mony different anes, for they're no a' in the same degree. There's some they ea' masters, and some that are but prentices, and office bearers, and doorkeepers, and some that's stricter, some that's slacker in the way they hand by their rules, and guid kens what a'. Faith, I dJubt there's a heap o' slackness amon' them, baith here and a'way—for the affair's in force a' ower the north o' Scotland, or maybe farther for a' I ken. But for their ca'in't word, it's just a way o' speakin' ; the same as you'll hear o' th3 Mason Word, though naebody kens gin they hae ae word or twa or a hunner, for that matter.' "

In Miss Grace of All Souls the hardships incidental to the lives of colliers are depicted so forcibly and vividly as to

make the book well worth reading on that account alone, and apart from its other merits ; but it would be hardly fair to our readers not to supplement this recommendation with a warning that the novel, which evidently purposes to illustrate

the relations between Capital and Labour, is written by one who appears to regard himself as holding a brief on behalf of the latter, and sometimes inculcates doctrines of a decidedly socialistic kind. No one has any right to coal, in his opinion, except those who actually extract it from the ground with their own hands—which principle, be it observed, would dispossess the owners of a good many other sorts of property as well as coal—and he therefore protests against wealth derived from this source being accumulated by colliery pro- prietors and landlords ; but he omits to say where, without this objeotionable accumulation, the capital requisite for carrying on business on a large scale is to come from ; nor does he seem to remember that if working men could dis- pense with the aid of capitalists it may reasonably be assumed that they would have done so long ago, and that the desire to accumulate is planted ineradicably in the human breast, and does good service to the world as an incentive to industry. It cannot be denied, too, that he lays himself open to the

charge of having allowed zeal for the men to make him write as a partisan who is careless about doing justice to both sides of the matter whereof he treats ; otherwise, would he not have given a picture of the paid agitator,—the foe to peace who feeds upon strife, and would, if harmony were universal, be compelled to work for his bread instead of obtaining it by fomenting discord ? And would not the book contain also some specimen of the worst kind on the men's side, to counterbalance the typical employer Brookster, who, though rolling in riches, yet, when heavily stocked with coal, deliberately brings about a strike by demanding an uncalled-for reduction of wages in order that the famine prices produced by the strike may enable him to dispose of his stocks at profit ; and whose callous conduct is felt to be all the more iniquitous because of his residing almost in the midst of the misery that he has caused, and seeing it daily with his own eyes ? That Sam's character is stamped with genuine and unusual worth and nobility we admit freely ; but however highly we esteem his good points, they do not seem sufficient so completely to obliterate the line of demarcation interposed by birth and breeding between a collier and a young lady, as to render the pair matrimonially suited to one another, and consequently the heroine's love-making produces the jarring effect inseparable (to the minds of most people) from the spectacle of a mesalliance. The individual with whom we are, throughout the whole book, always in most cordial sym- pathy, is Sam's mother, the sorely tried, stanch, brave little Nance.

The graceful and pleasant sketches of homely Scotch folk contained in The Days of Auld Lang Syne are full of humour and pathos ; and the author has a power of appreciating and depicting character which enables him to infuse into every- day incidents of life in a quiet village, the dramatic interest attached to fiction of the sensational class. A heroic spirit of self-sacrifice rising to the point of martyrdom ; diplomatic talents of a high order, which are shown in " creating an atmosphere," calculated to assist in obtaining reduction of rent or improvements from a landlord; bonds of neighbourly affection, uniting the whole village almost as if it were one family ; Sabbatarianism that does not include mind as well as body in the abstinence from worldly affairs insisted on rigidly on Sunday, but deems, on the contrary, that that day is a peculiarly favourable opportunity for business con- siderations, so that when a farmer wishes to recollect the disposition of things at a sale, " a'll cast ma mind ower the implements in the sermon," rises naturally to his lips ; shrewdness ; aversion to " blawing"—(i.e., boasting) ; these are some amongst the varied phases of human nature exhibited by the inhabitants of Drumtochty. But whatever phase be shown, honesty—(notwithstanding the ample justi- fication for Jamie Soutar's remark, "It's fearsome hoo Scotch folk 'ill lee tae cover gude deeds ")—and sterling goodness are always so thoroughly felt to be the underlying foundation, as quite to explain the desire " to be a credit to Drumtochty," which never leaves the minds of those whose ambition sends them forth from its narrow limits to win renown in the great world beyond. It is a pity that the book's subject- matter makes it necessary for all the people to talk broad Scotch. That their doing so is inevitable, we admit, but it is

drawback to some readers' enjoyment nevertheless.

The Sto,y of Ifisteess Dorothy Marvin has two historical events for its pivots,—viz., Monmouth's rebellion and the :,owing of William of Orange. The first of these serves to turn the hero into an outlaw and robber, whilst the second restores him to his rightful position as Sir Edward Arm- strong ; and during the intervening period he presents a com- bination of highwayman and gallant gentleman, which is not without resemblance to the dual existence of Messrs. Hyde and Jeky]. The two predominant passions that animate him are, thirst to avenge his father's death, and a chivalrous desire to win the approval of his " ladye love ;" and as she is a damsel regarding good fighting qualities as the first of male requisites, and he is by nature eminently adapted to satisfy her in this respect, there is an abundance of thrilling combats and adventures in the book to keep it lively from beginning to end. Dorothy herself, prompt with tongue and hand, ready for any madcap escapade, true-hearted, fearless, and saucy, is a piquant and taking heroine, admirably fitted to be her " dear lad's" mate; but the representation of her old father is less happy, for the brutality of Sir Nicolas's behaviour to a daughter so helpful, dutiful, and charming as Dorothy, seems overdone as well as unpleasant, and we think (and are glad to think) that he may safely be regarded as a creation of the author's imagination rather than a study done from life. There is an occasionally recurring flavour of Lorna Doane perceptible throughout the pages ; but though the story is perhaps not altogether to be called original, it is nevertheless healthy-toned and very readable.