22 APRIL 1871, Page 23

Jasmine Leigh. By C. C. Fraser-Tytler. (Strahan.)—This is a very

doleful little story, telling the fortunes of a young lady whom we cannot help thinking somewhat helpless and silly. It is put in the form of a diary, which, though not without a certain pathetic interest, provokes One by a simplicity which has the look of affectation. We feel sure that any young lady of sixteen—for that is the age of the diarist—would resent the idea that she would write so very artlessly. It is true that the scene of the story is laid fifty years ago, when sixteen did not mean as much as it means now. Is it not, by the way, an anachronism to make one of the interlocutors in a dialogue held in the year 1821 say, "Child, this is very beautiful ; who said it was ill-painted ? The idea is ancommon,—the real pre-Raphaelite "?