In the Service of Rachel, Lady Russell. By Emma Marshall..
(Seeley and Co.)—This is another of those admirable historical romances in which Mrs. Marshall makes the past speak to the present through its nobler characters. It is more tragic and pathetic than is her wont, for the Rachel, Lady Russell who. figures in it was the wife of one of the purest politicians who ever figured in English history, and a considerable portion of this book is devoted to the treachery which led to his martyrdom. This tragedy and pathos, however, are relieved by the (on the whole) pleasant experiences of the Massue family, who are French Pro- testants, though of English blood on the mother's side, and who are represented in the first page as arriving in 1682 at the old 'Chequers Inn ' in Canterbury. Louis de Massue, in particular, is a good sketch of a rather proud and independent lad. There is plenty of love and intrigue, personal as well as political, in the book, and yet a serenity as of a cathedral-close pervades it. It is full of Canterbury and Lambeth, and, after Lady Russell, Tillotson is the most prominent personage in it. Altogether, it may be said of In the Service of Rachel, Lady Russell, that in it is the most finished„ as yet, of Mrs. Marshall's romances.
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