27 AUGUST 1892, Page 26

A Valley of Shadows. By G. Colmore. 2 vols. (Chatto

and Windus.)—This a somewhat dreary story. Surely the village llrr. Cohnore calls Sleepy Dale must have been drawn from some narrative of Puritan times. The strictly pious Mr. Har- greaves, churchwarden and grocer, could hardly in this nineteenth century have requested a lady to leave the place because her ante- cedents did not please him, and to have represented himself as speaking in the name of the inhabitants. Both Hargreaves and his gr sat ally, Anne Hatherden, have a decided 'oak of romance about them.