the author of these volumes has written, ought to be
more practised in It is not that the matter is poor and scanty, while the style is good ; the ton.)—A lady who has written so much as, to judge from her title-page, style is as inartistic as that of a first beginner. The one good thing in her art. Her faults are the faults of crudeness, not those of exhaustion.
the book is Guy's wife, with her ruling passion, a frantic love of finery, —finery which she sacrifices her husband's honour to buy, though she never dares to wear it. This is only too natural a picture, and Miss Kortright draws it with courage. Some writers would have made the foolish woman repent after her first trouble. Foolish women don't re- pent. They go on, and if anything changes them, it is some tremendous shock that upsets the reason. This is all well done. But unless the good is mixed in greater proportion with the indifferent and the bad than it is here, we cannot say that additions to the already formidable lists of Miss Aikin-Bortright's novels are to be hoped for.
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