TWO NEW NOVELS.*

Tics first of these stories is a pleasant, quiet tale, in one volume, containing nothing exciting or striking, very slight and unpretentious, not aiming at depth of plot, close study of character, or great effect in any way, but care- fully finished, and good, as far as it goes. The title is explained by the story turning upon a disappointment in love, whereby the hero imagined his happiness to have been marred, but by whic.h it eventually proved to have been made. His name is Philip, and he is a clever, handsome, quiet, " latent " young man (with a strong family likeness to some of the author's previous heroes), who is employed as a civil engineer in a large manufacturing town in the north-west of England. Here he meets with Angela Fairfax, who is by birth

a lady, but who is in very reduced circumstances, and obliged to support herself by giving music lessons. Young, beautiful, cynical, and false, she holds the opinion that, "as for warm hearts, and that, they are often a great bore ;" is utterly incapable of love, gratitude, or of caring for any one except herself; and is "one of those women who will pursue any bypath through life which promises most ease to the feet, and the pleasantest banks to rest upon, even though to do it she must go for over with a lie in her right hand,'" In fact, she is a sort of modified Becky sharp, only less clever and—perhaps, for want of opportunity— less wicked than her distinguished prototype. Of course, Angela abhors the poverty into which she has fallen, and looks to mar-

riage as the easiest means . of escaping from it ; and as she thinks Philip a fairly eligible husband, if no one better should come in her way, she—though regarding him with supreme dis- dain—leads him on to propose to her, and keeps him in tow,

whilst secretly angling for a richer para. It is a very uneven love-making, for,—

" No lad's first love was ever more humble and desperate than this of Philip Massey. The whole thing must inevitably have been iudicrous—his blind, wild, uncompromising worship, and her cool, egotistical, unlovely, because sordid, coquetry—had it not been for

• Mods or liforred. By Jessie Fothergill. London : Bentley and Son.

Chriku Carew. By the Author of "Hogan, M,P," London: Macmillan sold Co.

the one element, on his side, of passionate earnestness, of loyal good. faith, and pure-hearted, single-minded adoration. This was what gave its tragic element to the affair. Philip worshipped his goddess most reverently, thinking her high above himself and every other creature ; being perfectly willing to forsake father and mother, brother and sister, and cleave for ever to her only."

This one-sided courtship is watched indignantly by Angela's sister, Mitbelle, a school-girl treated rather in Cinderella-fashion

by Angela. Mabelle is as true and amiable as her sister is the reverse, and seems to have had "all the conscientiousness of the family bestowed upon her." She is disgusted and overcome with shame at Angela's goings-on ; and when Philip is jilted heartlessly, she feels as much disgraced as though she had com- mitted the sin in her own person. So desperately sensitive, indeed, is she, that when after several years' absence he re-

turns, quite cured of his old passion, and ready to look out for another wife, she can even then hardly realise the possibility of his having sufficiently recovered from his wound for the sight or mention of herself and her sister to be endurable to him. Philip's sister Grace is a pleasant and vigorous sketch of a Yorkshire girl :—

"Full of life and spirit, and a bright example of the boasted in- telligence of her native county ; having an ample fund of shrewdness and common.sense—a'long head' on her young shoulders, and a warm, generous heart to boot. Honesty was her chief eharaeteristio —honesty of word, deed, and purpose on her own part ; a love of honesty in others, and a quickness in, as it were, scenting out dis- honesty in all its forms, and an intense, uncompromising detestation of it, which, as Philip told her, was, on the whole, rather troublesome than otherwise. But he smiled as he said it, and Grace, with a secret thrill of pleasure, felt that he loved her for that honesty, and that the salient feature of his own character was the seine thing, that, whatever he might say in jest or satire, he was loyal to the backbone—' jannock,' to use the expressive vernacular of Lancashire and Yorkshire—that, his word once seriously pledged, be it by no

more ample formula than yes,' or 'no,' 'I will,' or will not,' it would be kept, at whatever cost, and kept, not in letter only, but in the very spirit of his promise."

That expression of " jannock " is new to us, and we like it, and are obliged to the author for teaching it to us. All the people in her book except Angela are " jannock," which fact conduces to its success considerably, since individuals of that kind are always wholesome and satisfactory to have to do with, whether in novels or in real life.

There are a number of. other characters besides the four prin- cipal ones above mentioned, but they are all of minor importance, and merely introduced as necessary to the action of the story ; the hero's father, for instance, is shown only once, and theu asleep ; the scene being partly laid at his house, it would. have obviously seemed awkward for him not to be seen at all, so he is allowed to appear in such a form as to give the least possible amount of trouble. Hardly longer is the glimpse afforded of Philip's mother, who, however, in that short time shows a com- prehension of the strange power of comfort that nearness to the sea possesses for some natures, which makes us disposed for a further acquaintance with her ; here are her words,—" They all ' go to the sea who have been born near it, when they are in trouble I used to wander there myself in times of trouble, and look across it till my eyes ached. The father used to do the same, and every girl and boy of mine have taken their bits of trouble to the sea; now Philip, with his great grief, must go too." On the whole, we think the chief fault to find with Made or Marred is that there is not quite enough of it, and that it shows the author to have a ten- dency to fall into a groove and repeat herself; against this danger we venture to caution her. She is fond of representing

a hero with two possible sweethearts—one right and one wrong —and making him begin by falling violently in love with Miss Wrong, whilst side by side Miss Right is seen growing up or developing her character, so as to be all ready to hand by the time he has got through his disillusionment about Miss Wrong, and been allowed a decent interval for recovery. Does not Miss Pothergill think that she has given her readers enough of heroes in this position by now, and that she might indulge them with a variety in her next work ; or is it her object utterly to bring into discredit the old saying, On revient tonjours I sea premiers amours F"

The second novel we are to criticise is a clever and unusual book, which undeniably has considerable merit ; yet we confess we are somewhat surprised at its having become sufficiently popular to call for a new edition. The reason of our surprise is, first, that most of the people who fill the pages seem unlikely, however well drawn, to possess any general interest; and secondly, that the stage is so crowded

with characters as to distract the attention constantly from the

principal actors, and cause a lack of cohesiveness about the whole performance. There are two heroines,—Christy, the chief one, odd rather than lovable, an original and tolerably interest- itig conception of a 'girl who, with all her faults and caprices, has yet an honesty and sterling goodness about her which must at last command respect and liking; and Esther, a friend of Christy's, of a different and more attractive kind, whose pathetic love-story forms an episode apparently intended to demonstrate the hardship of the Roman-Catholic rule that discourages mixed marriages. The fortunes of these two heroines are both interest- ing, but, in order to follow them, the reader has to mix with a good many characters and to wade through a considerable amount of other matter, which he would. have been quite contented to have omitted. The story shows Irish middle- class life in Dublin; some of the individuals arc mercan- tile, and others a shade or two higher in the social scale ; but all alike belong to a set which is below any chance of social intercourse with the Castle inhabitants, save when attending a Viceregal drawing-room.

Whether the author's picture of this middle-class set is a carica- ture or an accurate likeness we cannot say, having never seen anything of it ourselves ; but at all events, the representation is neither amiable nor pleasing. Endless petty jealousies (if any- thing can properly be called petty that has an important bearing upon human life), spites, and squabbles of all kinds—religious, social, political, and domestic—are depicted skilfully and (for all we know) faithfully ; but are they profitable or agreeable subjects of contemplation If, as we suspect, many of the portraits are taken from life, an ha7ittt6 of the circle drawn may possibly be amused at being able to lay his finger here and there, and say, this is So-and-so, that is Such-au-one; but the mass of readers, who know nothing of this small circle, will only consider the picture interesting in so far as it gives them a view of a hitherto unknown world ; and if th.ey find that world an unattractive one, the chances are that they soon grow tired of it, and. shut up the book, without having gone far enough into it to do justice to the great cleverness and, power of its author. It appears to be the work of one who has lived in the society which is described, and has carefully and cynically noted the failings of that society. One striking feature in the sketch is the absence of genuine earnestness prevailing amongst the characters ; the religious or political creeds which they may ostentatiously profess and pretend enthusiasm for, are habitually treated as matters of social distinction, family, or interest, and never seem to have taken real, deep hold on their lives, or to be grasped with the firm grip and assent of the whole mind and heart which are due to a belief that claims to be the great mainspring of action. Any society of which such a constant contrast between profession and practice is a marked. characteristic, must necessarily be contemptible, and we venture to hope that the artist's hand. has been too heavy in the unflat- tering picture drawn of middle-class Irish life and opinion. We cannot conclude without remarking on the unusual gift displayed for graphic delineation of small events of every-day occurrence, which are so well narrated, that the reader cannot but fancy him- self taking part in what goes on. In reading some of the descrip- tions, particularly those of a dinner-party, a visit paid by two girls to a book-loving old priest, a picnic with a tragical termi- nation, and a drawing-room at the Castle, we seem to be actually watching and listening to living men and women ; the only pity is, that they are not more agreeable ones.