The Master of Aberfeldie. By James Grant. (Hurst and Blackett.)
—In this story the well-known author has availed himself of all the ingredients of the military novel. Descriptions of the scenery of Scotland, traditious of the Black Watch, and finally, the part taken by that corps in the recent Egyptian Campaign, are interwoven with a tale of somewhat conventional love-making and lovers' quarrels. The hero is Allan Graham, the master of Aberfeldie, as son and heir of Lord Aberfeldie, a Scotch baron as well as an English viscount. Hawke Holcroft, the villain of the plot, deserves that name, since he knocks Allan bead-first into an oubliette or dungeon attached to the family mansion, to the imminent peril of his life, then extorts money from Olive Raymond, cousin and fiancee of Allan, by the threat of making public a spurious photograph of an apparently compromising character, and finally robe her of a set of diamonds which bring ill. luckto him as to their former wearers. Sir Paget Paddicombe, an English baronet of fabulous wealth and repulsive appearance, who marries Eveline Graham, and opportunely breaks his neck so as to leave her free for her old lover, Evan Cameron, is but feebly por- trayed ; and the few other characters introduced are conventional enough. All the dramatis persona' are transferred to Ismailia in the third volume ; and thus descriptions of Egyptian localities, Arab sheiks, and finally the battle of Tel- el-Kebir, are all introduced before the lovers are left happy in an Ismailian villa. It will be seen that the story does not lack incident, the third volume being decidedly the most interesting of the three. Mr. Grant is wrong in attributing the authorship of Longfellow's "I know a maiden fair to see," to Tenny- son; and there are minor inaccuracies, such as "a legion of gleds cawing to each other." ( Vol. I., p. 155.) Probably rooks, Scottica crows, are meant. These errors, with a few phrases such as "un- exceptional toilettes," "her mystic finger," &c., may be amended in the feture cheaper edition.
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