For the Sake of the Siller, By Maggie Swan. (Oliphant,
Anderson, and Ferrier.)—If this is a beginning—and we do not remember to have seen the name of " Maggie Swan " before—it is distinctly a promising one. The heroine, Effie, is drawn with no little subtlety and plenty of light and shade. On the other hand, there is shade and no light in Teen Lawson. How a woman so utterly hard and given over to covetousness could have been the daughter of the genial old patriarch, John Blyth, passes under- standing. Such unmixed blackness offends not only against art, but against human probabilities. And what does Miss Maggie Swan mean us to think of Mr. Fairweather, the minister? Ho seems to do his duty fairly well, when he is called into action; but we are not instructed to respect him. Was it his misfortune, by chance, to be a minister of the " Establishment "? There are crudities and defects in the tale which we have not hesitated to point out ; but its merits are considerable. For the sake of English readers we may express a hope that another tale may contain either less Scotch or a loss difficult form of it.
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