Memories of Troublous Times; being the History of Dame Alicia
Chamberlayne. By Emma Marshall. (Seeleys.)—This is a fairly successful specimen of the literature of which " The Household of Sir Thomas More" and "Mary Powell" are early and well known examples. Dame Alicia is the daughter of a citizen of Gloucester, and marries a young kinsman, who, while her own family are of the Puritan persuasion, follows the King. The story of her courtship and marriage is prettily told ; lights and shadows are skilfully inter- mingled, and the reader is now and then called to take interest in the domestio history of her later days. Mrs. Marshall has incor- porated into her story " a genuine autobiography of the seventeenth century." This, the work of a person of extreme Puritan opinions, is very curious. The writer says in her preface that she does not pro- fess to have followed exactly " the literary style of two hundred years ago." Nevertheless, there is no little skill and felicity in the com- position, and we sometimes have wished in reading it that the author, by taking moderate pains to avoid obvious modernisms, had made it as she evidently could have done, had she pleased, more harmonious and self-consistent.
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