TALEs.—Muriel Ray. By Emily Constance Taylor. (Rivingtons.)
— Muriel is a young lady of considerable intellectual powers, in whom the intense thirst for knowledge seems to choke all striving of the spiritual life. From the torpor of this state she is aroused by the preaching of a mission conducted under Evangelical auspices. For a time, her "conversion" seems to fill her life with an unflagging joy. fulness, and to satisfy all her needs. But the theology of her new teachers, with its Calvinistic narrowness and hardness, begins to revolt her, and she is falling back into darkness, when there dawns upon her, in the life of her old teacher, now also her lover, the light of a more liberal faith. The story is told with considerable force and skill.—Dick Net herby, by L. B. Wulford (Blackwood and Sons), is hardly as good a tale as we expect to get from the author. The fortunes and misfortunes of a fine young fellow, whose foolish mother has done her best to spoil him, and who is taught sense by a severe discipline of suffering, are the subjects of the story. The reader's interest is fairly well kept up, but the whole seems to want distinction. The incidents are not com- bined in a skilful plot, and the characters, though they talk naturally enough, seldom say anythingthat is worth hearing.—Master of All, by E. R. Chapman, 2 vols. (Sampson Low and Co.), is a book which gives fair promise for the future, though its present performance is scarcely a success. The pen which drew " Max," and which tells the story of his wasted life and pathetic end, will, we hope, write hereafter something that shall really please, and win something better than the grudging praise which is all that we can give to Master of Alt.—Unravelled Skeins ; Tales for the Twilight. By Gregson Gow. (Blackie and Son.)—There are, we think, some faults of taste in the telling of these stories, but they have a certain force. Perhaps the best is " My Study Chair," which certainly may have the effect, to be desired, we suppose, in "tales for the twilight," of making the flesh creep.
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