CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Fatal Silence. By Florence Marryat. 3 vols. (Griffith, Farran, and Co.)—There is in A Fatal Silence some of the best work Florence Marryat has done. The description of the village folk of Deepdale, with their row-bred jealousy and their pitiful vulgarity, is a very caustic one, just that kind of realism which the author delights in. It is very cruel ; but then, the people themselves are so truly detestable that we may forget the animus in the sketch. The heroine, a young, ladylike schoolmistress, is precisely the object to arouse the worst feelings of the community ; and she suffers, but eventually triumphs completely. She has a history, about which she is naturally silent; but the silence is not fatal, and the story ends happily. All the characters are good, and we could not pick out any particular individual, except per- haps the effusive dowager, for praise. The two village gossips, Mrs. Gribble and Mrs. Axworthy, are certainly capital, though their vulgarity becomes somewhat trying after a while. No one will deny the literal accuracy of their visit and ignominious defeat at the house of the poor girl they once slandered ; it is a model scene for similar occasions. Mrs. Snaley, the step-mother- in-law of the heroine, is one of those unpleasant vitriolic women peculiar to Florence Marryat ; but the dramatic interest of the chapters which contain the narrative of her performance of the duties of nurse to the child of the woman to make room for whom she has been turned out of the house, is intense. If the authoress will always write as well and as sarcastically, and in as good taste as she does in A Fatal Silence, she need fear no competition in her own line.
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