The Cupel Girls By Edward Garrett. 2 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)
—Mr. Garrett has an unquestionable power of describing life, and he never describes it without having some high purpose in view. In the Capel Girls, he seeks to show how variously circumstances, mean, de- pressing, and even perilous, may be moulded by the diverse wills and tempers of those who have to act among them. The mean and selfish Beauty of the family comes to ruin ; higher aims and nobler characters find their reward in happiness, or at least in peace. The women of the story are the principal personages in it, and the author's labour has been chiefly spent in drawing them ; but he has given not a few skilful touches to the steady, persevering Philip and the unlucky Antony Fiske. But why does he spoil a story which should have nothing startling about it by a sensational incident which recalls the extrava- gant plot of "East Lynne "? How preposterous and how grotesque the idea of the divorced wife coming back to the home of the husband whom she had deserted—and coming in the capacity of a charwoman ! And how—to mention one of the little details which are sometimes significant —did the nephew of Lord Verdon come to be the Honourable Captain Verdon ?
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