CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Cloud on St. Angelo. By Cyril Bennett. 2 vols. (T. F. Unwin.)—There is a great deal of imperfectly disciplined power in this story, which is, on the whole, an improvement on " The Massage Case," from the same pen. In mere plot-interest, it is not particularly strong, and the catastrophe of poor Helen Rivette, which constitutes the chief sensational incident of note in the plot, is too unpleasant, if not improbable. One wonders, too, how such an essentially strong-minded woman as Helen should get engaged to a man like Pierson, who is correctly enough described by one of his critics as "an invertebrate sort of animal," and as " wanting in moral starch." Some of the characters, however, are drawn with a firm hand, more particularly the lovers, Madie and Daly. Even Dr. Willoughby, the abstracted and absent-minded man of numbers, would have been a perfect sketch but for the tendency of his eccentricity to run into sheer farcicality. The author is evidently familiar with essentially clerical society in Great Britain, although it may be noted that the word "rectorette " is neither classical nor pretty. The Italian landscapes in A Cloud on St. Angelo are admirable.
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