NOVELS OF THE WEEK.* Miss JEWETT, like Miss Wilkins, is
an admirable delineator of the amenities of rural life in the States, and her graceful talent has never been more happily displayed than in the quaintly named volume before us, The Queen's Twin, and other Stones. Life in America, according to Mr. Dooley, is not suited to a tired man; in his picturesque phrase the person in need of rest is like a man trying to read the Lives of the Saints at a Clan-na-Gael meeting. But if American city life involves an undue strain on the nerves, there are rural retreats in New England and else- where, where the current of existence flows on as placidly and tranquilly as anywhere in the old country. It is the peculiar merit of Miss Jewett that she is able to seize and transfer to her pages the grace and sentiment and courtesies of this homely, leisurely life. The scene of the beet stories in the book is laid on the coast of Maine among the fisher-folk and farmers, where the narrator is supposed to be spending her
• (1.) The Queen's Twin, and other Stories. By Sarah Orne Jewett. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. [is ]—(2.) A Daughter of the Marionis. By E. Phillips Oppenhelm. London : Ward, Lock, and Co. [3s. 611—(3.) The Cambric Mask. By R. W. Chambers. London Macmillan and Co. [6s.]—(4.) Dora Myrl : the Lady Detective. By M. McD. Bodkin, Q.C. London : Chatto and Windus. [3s, 6d.] (0.) Fed: a Romance. By Max Pemberton. London: Hodder and Stoughton. [6a]—(6.) The Yellow Badge. By Jean Middlemass. London : Dlgby, Long, and Co. [63.]—(7.) In Old New York. By Wilson Barrett and Elwyn Barron. London: John Macqueen. [68.]—(3.) From Kingdom to Oolong. By Mary Devereux. London : Gay and Bird. (6s.)—(9.) The Golden Dog. By William %Irby, F.R.S.C. London : Jarrold and Sons. [68.]
summer holidays, and in atmosphere and characterisation they bear the unmistakable impress of veracious as well as sym- pathetic observation. We have seldom read anything prettier in its way than the unexpected romance of the elderly fisherman and the middle-aged shepherdess—a really heroic figure of filial devotion—whose mutual attachment is sustained by a single meeting in the year. Mr. Blackett (the taciturn fisherman) is also a most engaging person, one of his traits being that "he had a peculiar way of giving silent assent when one spoke, but of answering your unspoken thoughts as if they reached him better than words." The tale which gives its name to the collection is also charming ; it was not easy to avoid the pitfalls of snobbery on the one hand and absurdity on the other, but Miss Jewett has succeeded perfectly, and the result is altogether touching. We cannot say that the Irish-American stories are particularly successful ; for one thing Miss Jewett's dialect abounds in outrageous solecisms. No Irish- woman ever said " coom " for "come," or " shild " for " child."
Pleasant recollections of Mr. Chambers's Ashes of Empire that spirited romance of the Franco-Prussian war, gave rise to anticipations only partially fulfilled in The Cambric Mask. The opening chapters excite hopes of a thrilling American financial melodrama, hopes that are destined to disappointment on the emergence of the sentimental interest. There is certainly originality in the notion of a hero—a young and handsome soldier—burying himself in the wilds of Mohawk County in order to gratify his passion for entomology, and being so absorbed in his butterflies as to be blind to the charms of the beautiful young lady who acts as his assistant. But the whole situation is so artificial as to provoke irritation rather than entertainment. The slow English mind is, we fear, incapable of comprehend- ing such a personality as that of Rose Ember, in whom constant association with a drunken unscrupulous father and a pack of savage highwaymen is powerless to impair her refinement and delicacy. The rapid alternations of persiflage, farce, and melodrama bewilder and fatigue the reader, and when the entomologist does fall in love, it is love of the calf rather than the butterfly order. The villains are so far more interesting than the virtuous characters, that the ultimate triumph of the latter leaves us cold, which is a highly unsatisfactory result in a melodrama.
We owe- to Mr. Oppenheim the pleasing creation of that Napoleonic intriguer, Mr. Sabin, who devoted all the time he could spare from the occupation of unmaking nations and undermining thrones to the pursuit of golf. In his latest sensational venture, A Daughter of the Jfarionis, the plot moves on more conventional lines. Prince Marioni, a Sicilian noble and political exile, the rejected suitor of a beautiful Italian prima don-net, after a bootless effort to abduct his ladylove, picks a quarrel with his successful rival, Lord St. Maurice, and would have infallibly taken his life but for the intervention of the prima donna, who separates the com- batants and, having placed certain compromising documents relative to the identity and antecedents of the Prince in the hands of the police, secures his arrest and conviction. We may remark parenthetically that Mr. Oppenheim's views on the maintenance of law and order in Sicily hardly tally with the revelations in the Notarbarbolo case now being tried at Milan. Twenty-five years elapse and Prince Marioni is once more free to prosecute his schemes of vengeance. To this end he induces his orphan niece, who has become a governess in the house of Lord St. Maurice, to poison the ex-prima donna. Unfortunately, Margharita, the fair toxicologist, having fallen in love with the heir to the earldom, Lord Lumley, backs out of the undertaking and takes the poison herself. It remains to be added that the poison turns oat innocuous, and that the Prince, who has come to see how his scheme is pro- gressing, is opportnnately stabbed by an escaped lunatic. There is one passage describing Margharita.'s appearance, which seems to us well worth quoting. "She wore a plain black net dinner gown, curving only slightly downwards at the white throat, the sombreness of which was partially re- lieved by an amber foundation." After which we are not surprised to learn that she had "luxurious black hair," or that her entrance into the dra.wiug-room at Lord St. Maurice's was "something like a thunderbolt."
Mr. Bodkin has followed up the lively adventures of his "rule of thumb detective," Paul Beck, with a companion collection entitled Dora Myrl : the Lady Detective. bora Myrl, we have no hesitation in saying it, was one of the most remarkable specimens of new womanhood ever evolved in modern and ancient fiction. At the age of eighteen she was already a Cambridge Wrangler ; by twenty she had completed her medical education, given up medical practice, and succes- sively occupied the posts of telegraph girl, telephone girl, and lady journalist. Fortunately for the reading public, she found her true vocation while acting as a companion to a weak-minded matron, who was being blackmailed by an un- scrupulous nurse, and thenceforth leapt into a large and lucrative practice. Her methods, as illustrated by a dozen of the cases on which she was profes- sionally employed, might be describe I as intuitive. She was an adept at disguises, and could pose with equal success as a lady palmist, a messenger boy, or a dapper little Frenchman. The society in which Dora moves is highly aristocratic : in particular, we meet with a Lord Millicent who is presumably the same as the Lord Mellecent who appears in a Previons episode. But then spelling never was a strong point with the aristocracy. The book is full of absurdities and solecisms, but its simplicity and vivacity are irresistible. We may be forgiven for doubting, however, whether children of twelve are now sent to prison for theft.
Mr. Pemberton is a great deal more entertaining in dealing with adamantine pirates than gilded Archdukes. Fjo, his new novel, is exclusively concerned with the love affairs of a Prince and a singer, and Mr. Pemberton's endeavours to introduce blood-curdling adventures, kidnappings, and escapes into this elegant and exalted region are not altogether suc- cessful. The censoriously exact reader will also be puzzled to know how Feo, the heroine, managed to go about Paris for twenty-four hours, more or less,.with her dress torn at the shoulder, and generally bearing the marks of her nocturnal flight and wanderings, without attracting unpleasant comment. The sudden change in the disposition of "His Highness's" august father towards the marriage has not sufficient motive. At one moment he is the instigator of the principal villain and kidnapper, and almost at the next the benevolent parent giving his benediction. Altogether it cannot be said that Fe'o will add to Mr. Pemberton's reputation for thrilling stories of adventure.
The Yellow Badge, by Miss Jean Middlemass, is a fairly readable modern story dealing with ex-convicts, "works," and love affairs. No great subtlety is shown either in plot or characterisation, but the book is fluently written and its purpose unimpeachable.
Three novels, dealing with the early days respectively of America and Canada, are, In Old New York, by Wilson Barrett and Elwyn Barron, From, Kingdom, to Colony, by Mary Devereux, and The Golden Dog, by William Kirby. They all throw an interesting light on the history of the times, though it cannot be said that as novels pure and simple they are any of them eminently successful. There are far too many good "curtains" in In Old New York, as may be expected, since it was founded on a play. The Golden Dog, a romance of the days of Louis XV. in Quebec, suffers on the other hand from long-windedness and slow movement. Six hundred and twenty-four closely-printed pages require more than a spark of genius to keep the reader's attention fixed to the end. Front Kingdom to Colony, a pretty story, containing a sympathetic sketch of Washington, is decidedly the best and most readable of the three.
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