The New Eve. By Mr. Randolph. (Spencer Blackett.)—Some cne has
said that the war of the future is to be waged between men and women, and a French writer has declared the two sexes to be "eternal enemies." Mr. Randolph evidently entertains similar views, and his very clever, very painful, very cynical novel is an exposition of the quarrel as it stands, which puts woman— that is to say, a woman—in as odious a light as any writer has ever ventured to turn on that being, who used to be the poet's dream, and the novelist's phantom of delight. Mrs. Vernon— the new Eve—is irredeemably false, bad, detestable, and it is hard to realise that such a woman could so enthral a man like Ferrers, who is attractive, though weak, and has some good in him, although he adopts the at least inconsiderate device of making violent love to Mrs. Vernon himself, in order to lead her into the paths of wifely and motherly duty. There is no denying the cleverness of the book, but it has the inartistic fault of being all shadow. Women, and even men, are bad ; but they are not all bad, and very few are so bad as the tenants of the extraordinary Eden in which Mr. Randolph places the vile creature who is Eve, and serpent in one.
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