RECENT NOVELS.*

The Story of a Kiss seems at first eight—and, indeed, at second and third sight—rather a silly title for a three-volume novel ; bat after reading the book so named, we must admit that it is not altogether inappropriate. The kiss given by Keith Moray to the half-unconscious Genevra Farquhar is, in itself, a trivial and insignificant incident enough; but the heroine's sensitiveness with regard to it, maintained a little more obstinately than we think it would be by any real girl, makes it into a pivot situation on which the story very smoothly turns. The opening of the novel is by no means promising, for the first chapter is written in the vein of that forced deadly-liveliness which very young authors erroneously imagine to be humorous, and contains an altogether inexcusable blunder as to the nature of "real estate." In literature, however, as in life, beginnings are difficult ; even the beginning of that unconsidered trifle, a newspaper review, often gives its writer ten times as much trouble as the middle and the end; and it is well when the premier pas is the only or the worst blander. As the author of The Story of a Kiss warms to her work, her style perceptibly improves ; and by the time we get fairly into the heart of the first volume, we begin to feel that we have no longer any very solid reasons for complaint, at any rate on this particular score. The structural lines of the story are simple enough. Genevra Farquhar, a simple, refined, and innocent girl of sixteen, leaves the country home where all her short life has been spent, to stay a month with some relatives in London, who treat her with as much in- difference as is consistent with the minimum of politeness. Sir Brian Carruthers, an elderly bachelor, takes pity upon the girl, and, after contributing to her amusement to the beet of his ability, startles her by a proposal of marriage ; while she, in her confusion, returns an answer which he takes for an acceptance. In the course of her return journey to her mother's home, she snakes the acquaintance in the train of Mr. Keith Moray, and having made a mistake in changing carriages, is compelled to accept his escort in a drive across the country. The vehicle is overturned ; Genevra's ankle is so much hurt that she faints with the pain, and the susceptible Keith, who has fallen in love at first sight and for the first time, cannot resist the temptation to commit the offence which gives a title to the story. Genevra's own emotions are to be guessed from the fact that in a state of half-unconsciousness she returns the kiss but when she regains full possession of her senses, indignation with the wicked young man overpowers all other feelings, and she parts in high anger from her youthful admirer. Keith, a pure-minded, chivalrous, though somewhat too impulsive youth of twenty, retires crest- fallen; but, of course, we know that the separated couple will meet again, and that in the end young love will have its way, in spite of Sir Brian. We will not indicate the course of the story, and will only say that it is pleasantly and naturally told. There are, perhaps, rather too many subsidiary characters ; but as they are all lifelike, we do not complain loudly. The Story of a Kiss is in some respects above the average, and in no respect below it.

In Love the Conqueror we have a book written apparently to supply the demands of those numerous readers who are quite satisfied if they get plenty of "story"—by which they mean incident—and do not require style, humour, pathos, probability, or fidelity to human nature. A wealthy young Manchester manu- facturer marries a pretty work-girl, and takes a house for her in London ; but becoming tired of her in a few menthe, he informs her that the marriage ceremony has been a sham. This crudely simple expedient of telling a lie, trusting that it will be accepted without any question, is perfectly successful; and though Fanny Kettering could—and in real life assuredly would—have speedily satisfied herself that she was beyond all doubt Edward Leng's wife, she accepts the situation as presented to her, leaves the house which her deceiver has provided, and in the course of her journey to her mother's home, falls ill, is taken to a hospital, and dies after giving birth to twin girls. To the adventures of these girls the story is largely devoted, and they certainly provide a good deal of excitement of a somewhat crude order. One of the children rims away from her grandmother, who sud- denly develops into a monster of cruelty, takes refuge in the family of an impecunious music-master, becomes a celebrated • (1.) The Story of a Kiss By the Anther of "My Insect Queen," Se. 3 vole. London : a. Bentley and Son —(2 ) Lore the Conqueror. By Sydney Candone. 3 vols. London: Ward and Downey.—(34 The Treasure of Thorburne. By Fred”rick Boyle. 3 vols. London: Haut and Bisekett.—(4.) The Troubles of an Heiress. By Cecil Loxes. 3 Val. London : F. T. White and 0o.—(3.) Dis- appeared. By Sarah Tytler. London: Chatto and Windne.—(5.) Hoy O'Brien. By E. Skeffington Thompson. Dublin : M. H. Gill and eon.—(7.) lea. By the Editor of the North-Eastern Daily Garette. 2 vols. London: Remington and Os.

singer, and finally marries her cousin, the son of Edward Leng's sister, who has become the wife of Sir Alfred Wyman, Bart. The second of the girls remains with the grandmother, is the victim of an attempted seduction, and while endeavouring to struggle out of the river into which she has thrown herself, has the ill-fortune to attract the attention of her aunt, Lady Wyman, by whom she is at once strangled. Only to those who care for this kind of thing—and we do not suppose that many of such people are readers of the Spectator—can Love the Conqueror be even hesitatingly commended. The best chapters are those which deal with the Daker family ; but even they are only com- paratively good, being spoiled by coarsely exaggerated handling, and the book as a whole is a thoroughly poor one.

Though there is a fair amount of fragmentary and ineffective cleverness in The Treasure of Thorburns, it leaves behind it a general impression of unsatisfactoriness. We cannot ignore the imagination displayed in the character of Mr. Esking, the distinguished archmologist, but it is imagination which stops short of complete realisation. For example, there is nothing nnlifelike or unrealisable in the combination of prosaic business shrewdness, with an enthusiasm for antiquities which develops into something like monomania, and we can follow Mr. Boyle with full belief when he makes the otherwise honest Mr. Esking determine to steal the treasure which he believes to be buried under the old house of Thorburns. It is, however, altogether incredible that such a man as Mr. Esking is represented to be should have put himself into the power of a poor weak fool like Hubert Fanshawe, by confiding the scheme to him before assuring himself of the certainty of his co-operation; and there- fore the inevitable catastrophe is brought about by a mechanical process, instead of being, as it ought to be, an organic necessity. This is specially unfortunate, for both the character and the situation are conceived with real freshness; and the book is provoking not because it is bad, but becanse, being in many respects good, it might have been—and, we feel, ought to have been—so much better. Eldred Thorburn is throughout admirable; but the African chapters in which we make his acquaintance, though very spirited in themselves, are merely padding, and have no vital relation to the story. The Treasure of Thorburns is, indeed, a somewhat formless novel,—unquestionably clever here and there, but disappointing as a whole.

Cecil is one of those epicene Christian names which are in some cases rather puzzling to a reviewer ; but it does not require much insight to guess with some assurance of certitude that Cecil Lucas, who tells the story of The Troubles of an Heiress, is a lady, for ebe is specially strong in her manage- ment of those details in which the feminine mind is naturally interested, while in dealing with such masculine subjects as the minutire of University life, she writes as a well-informed out- sider rather than as one " native and to the manner born." Perhaps we can best describe the book by saying that the author carries the method and characteristic tone of Miss Charlotte Yonge into fresh woods and pastures new. She writes in a quiet, subdued, and eminently " lady-like " style ; she deals almost exclusively with cultivated people of the higher

middle class ; she eschews all but the very mildest excitement ; she inclines to regard an English clergyman of good Church principles as the noblest work of God ; and evidently has a suspicion that it is hardly possible for a Dissenter or a Liberal to be quite "nice." It is impossible always to avoid a quiet smile at the writer's naivete, but there is not a sentence in the book which can give offence to any reasonable being, and there is so much unpretentious truthfulness in the handling of character, that the story cannot fail to interest those who do

not demand strong stimulants. The troubles of the heroine are endured at the hands of two unspeakably and, as it seems to us,

rather incredibly vulgar women, who, by their nagging and

small tyranny, make one year of her life almost unendurable, and also at the hands of their equally vulgar brother, who not

only joins in the nagging, but swindles the unfortunate Frances

Kenyon out of a large portion of her property. We may confess that in this portion of the story, skilfully told as it is, we do not

find anything to compensate us for the extreme discomfort of a

forced acquaintance with the very objectionable Frasere ; but the sketch of the heroine's life among the girl-students at Miss

Grey's home in Fairbairn Place is wholly delightful. The con- versations throughout, especially those dealing with topics, are exceptionally bright and natural, though we note that the author's views on vivisection are in an undesirably nebulous condition. Since the days of Citoyenne Jacqueline, the name of Miss Sarah Tytler upon a title-page has been a pleasant sight for both reader and reviewer, for it is a guarantee of good taste, careful writing, keenness of observation, imaginative veracity, insight, humour, and, in greater or less degree, of most of the qualities that give a charm to literature. There is no falling-off in her latest book, though it has very much less substance than the majority of its predecessors, being not merely a short one-volume story, but—as our American friends would say—" slight at that." Indeed, it would hardly be anything more than a sketch were it not for the incident, or rather the simple series of incidents, to which the title refers. Tom Gage, a young Oxford don, has a very inconvenient and uncomfortable practice of going abroad for the long vacation and omitting to acquaint his family with his whereabouts ; and on the occasion with which the story deals, he not only keeps up his usual custom, but reduces his family to distraction by failing to reappear at the beginning of the term. The situation is rendered more tragic by certain facts, known only to Hugo Kennett, the painfully earnest young Professor of History, and confided by him to Tom Gage's sister, which suggest the conclusion that the poor fellow who is missing may never have started upon his journey at all, but may, on the contrary, have been lying under the water of the canal into which he has been seen to fall. The mystery is handled in a very interesting manner, but we must not hint at the solution of it. What there is of story is capitally told, but its main service is to hold together an exceedingly bright sketch of University life. St. Bernard's is so evidently meant for Oxford, that in a preceding sentence the real name rather than the fictitious one came naturally to the end of our pen, and the academic society of our oldest University is sketched with a satirical but not unkindly humour which is very pleasant. The contrast between Hugo Kennett, to whom life is so very serious, and Tom Gage, to whom, at least in seeming, it is so very much the reverse, is drawn with sympathetic cleverness ; and Tom's sister Petronella is a girl with whom we, as well as Hugo, are ready to fall in love at once. Of course, there is not nearly so much body in Disappeared as there was, for example, in St. Mungo's City; but even Miss Tytler has never written a book more notably distinguished by those qualities which, in the mass, we call artistic. Good one- volume novels are desirable things, but they are not numerous. Disappeared is, however, one of them.

The preface to Moy O'Brien leads us to expect a political novel; and when we learn that it appeared first in the columns of that Nationalist organ, the Dublin Weekly Freeman, in the year 1878, we naturally look for a strong anti-English feeling. We therefore think it only fair to admit at once that the perusal of a very pleasant, clever, and utterly offencelese story proves our guess to be altogether erroneous ; for though the English landlord, Mr. Hackney, is a despicable cur and tyrant, some of the pleasantest people to whom we are introduced are English either by birth or education. Indeed, the story does not even contain much polemical matter. It is true that we are not allowed to forget for long that the author of Moy O'Brien is an enthusiastic Home-ruler; but those who are most strongly convinced that Home-rule is a mischievous craze may read with pleasure, and possibly with profit, the very graphic and by no means unfair or one-sided sketch of the condition of rural Ireland at the time with which the story deals. There is not much humour in the book—a rather rare deficiency in an Irish novel—but it exhibits both strength and grace, and the writer is happy alike in delineation of character and management of incident. During the past few years, we have had several good Irish novels, but we think that none of them has been pleasanter or better worth reading than May O'Brien.

We cannot guess why the editor of the North-Eastern Daily Gazette has chosen to put his official designation rather than his name on the title-page of ha. It certainly saves him from the misfortune of being numbered among the crowd of incapable amateurs who, so far from being able to construct a story, cannot even construct a sentence; but on the other hand, it exposes him to the perilous honour of being tried by a somewhat higher standard than that by which we judge the ordinary novice. The author's style is certainly less direct and businesslike than we should expect to find the style of a man who has bad a journalistic training. It is somewhat crudely effusive, not to say gushing ; and the editor of the North-Eastern Daily Gazette has certainly failed to acquire the knack of writing lifelike con- versation, for his characters, especially his heroine, are too apt to declaim when they ought to converse. These defects are, however, trifling, and might easily have been condoned had the writer told a pleasant story ; but, unfortunately, this is one of the most unpleasant stories we can remember. Isa herself is by nature a noble and loveable girl, but she is a victim to homicidal mania which is apt to attack her upon her birthday, or on any other occasion when she catches sight of blood. We are led to infer that during the years previous to the period with which the story deals, she has actually committed one, if not two murders, and we are witnesses of her fortunately ineffectual attempts upon the lives of her mother-in-law and her husband, to say nothing of the hideous torture of a robin, which, when one of her paroxysms seizes her, happens to be the only available victim. This robin incident, which occurs in the first chapter, is, in the most literal sense of the word, so sickening, that sensitive readers will probably close the book at once. Nor can we honestly encourage them to persevere. To deny to Isa a certain kind of power would be unfair ; but it is not difficult to produce strong impressions when such materials as blood and madness are unsparingly used. What the writer might do with a less gruesome subject we cannot say ; we can only wish that he had made a better beginning, as his first attempt in fiction is a literary nightmare for the existence of which we can see no possible justification.