Mr. Gray and his Neighbours. By Peter Pyper. 2 vols.
(John Hodges.)—We suppose that this may be described as a High- Church story,—novel, we can hardly call it. Its writer seems to be a person of considerable cultivation and some humour, though he possesses both qualities somewhat after the manner of the famous com- parison, " like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." As long as he is content to go rambling on, relating isolated passages in the lives of "Mr. Gray and his neighbours," we find his disjointed talk very tolerable ; directly, however, he tries to gather up his threads into a story, he fails dismally. Mr. Gray is a High-Church clergyman in Marshland (we had nearly written, in Lincolnshire), his daughter breaks off her engagement with a young nobleman on account of an act of immorality in her father's parish, subsequently rescues him after a romantic fashion from ship- wreck, and then dies. This simple motif is put before us with an amount of diffuseness and prolixity almost incredible ; none of the per- sonages can take the smallest step without several pages of argumenta- tion and palaver ; the heroine argues with her father for the space of
Bishop Wilberforce.
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