Squire Harrington's Secret. By George W. Garrett. 2 vols. (Samuel
Tinsley.)—One would think, after reading this book, that Mr. Garrett bad never written a novel before. The incidents are of the most familiar kind (we mean familiar in novels, not in life), and succeed in the most familiar order. That the hero is a foundling, and that be falls in love with the heiress to a fine fortune, and that he is ultimately proved to bo himself the legitimate heir, is the main incident of the story. Before this discovery takes place be is placed in a house of business, and being naturally sent to lodge in the house of a trusted clerk, of course finds a fellow-lodger in the villain who knows all about his birth, and has committed some dark crime, which is, or is supposed to be, connected with it. Equally of course be overhears a conversation which gives him a hint of the truth. Lost heirs always do meet the right person, and the right person always talks for the occasion—for this can hardly be the common habit of the class—in a voice that can bo heard through a partition. It is true that something in the book does not happen exactly as we have been led to expect. We are made to fear that the hero's father-in-law had murdered
his father, but the complication is otherwise explained. The story is not other than readable, but it is not equal to what we supposed that Mr. Garrett could do.
Previous page
