Is he the Man? By W. Clark Russell. 3 vols.
(Tinsley Brothers.) —Mr. Russell belongs to the school of novelists of which Mr. Wilkie Collins may be said to be the representative. He even uses that gentleman's device—which we never liked—of telling his story through the mouths of different characters. At the same time, he has a very distinct power of his own. He gives us a taste of his quality early in the first volume, in his description of Mrs. Savile Ransom, a description which is as good as a portrait, and which may be matched with another picture of the heroine in a rage, which, as shorter, we may quote :—" Her face was marble-coloured with wrath ; her eyes glowed ; her black, narrow eyebrows were knitted into a violent frown, which had the effect of contracting the skin upon her forehead and bringing her hair appreciably lower, and thus giving shadow and force to the gloomy expression that darkened her countenance." The personages of the story are, indeed, all well characterised. But the author's chief pains have been expended on the plot. To criticise it in detail would not be to do the author a service. Let it suffice to say that it is well constructed, and that the reader is well kept in the dark, though it may be objected that it does not mach matter which of the two solutions of the mystery are true, the general result of the drama being sufficiently evident.
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