Bruna's Revenge. By the Author of "Caste." 3 vols. (Hurst
and Blacket.)—Bruna's Revenge is the longest of four stories which the author has included in the orthodox three volumes, by what is surely a somewhat perverse adherence to an inconvenient custom. If you want so much space for your story, let it be taken, but why pile together stories to fill up the space ? Tho principal tale is clever, but certainly not agreeable. Bruns, the heroine, is one of the most disagreeable and perverse of human beings, with whom a lover, entranced by admiration of her marvellous beauty, might have borne, but whom no one else could have endured. As for the way in which she and, in a less degree, her lover, illtreat and victimize the angel of the story, the sweet, patient Ann, it passes all endurance. Bruna's " revenge " consists in run- ning away from her affianced lover, making a tool of his friend, whom she draws on to the grossest treachery, and then contemptuously throws over —this part of the story reminds the reader of Carker and Edith Dombey in Dambey and Son "—and then going upon the stage. The deserted one does the most sensible thing he could, and becomes engaged to Ann, who has always loved him. Of course Brune turns up again ; Ann gives up all her hopes, and turns to play with more than human patience the part of "Aunt Annie" to Bruna's children. The only consolation administered in the way of poetical justice to the reader is that the odious Brune grows stout as a matron, and that she feels this is a real punishment. But that is surely, to use an expression of Lord Lytton's, a very "soft rose of poetical justice." Of the other tales, "Two Eras in Maude Rosaiter's Life "is perhaps the best.
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