Once ! By Curtis Yorke. (Jarrold and Sons.)—Curtis Yorke has
written a very sentimental and unreal novel, the principal merit of which is that it is in one volume instead of in three. Nor is it even a very pleasant story, three of the principal characters being,—a married man who makes love in his own house to his cousin and guest ; the wife of this worthy, who takes chloral and finally elopes with a lover ; and the clergyman, Mark Renton, who is represented as being a most high-minded and indeed saintly person, but who is so much upset by the bad treatment of an arrant flirt that he first seduces one of his humble parishioners and then goes mad in the pulpit. A much more pleasant character is the doctor, Sutherland, who is Curtis Yorke's real hero, but he is such a shadowy person that he counts for very little. The time spent in writing Once ! was wasted, and the time spent in reading it will be wasted also.
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