The Family. By Elinor Mordaunt. (Methuen and Co. 68.) —We
admire greatly the courage and breadth of Miss Mordaunt's plan, and her success in writing of a family as a community. She has sketched her individuals brilliantly, without a trace of caricature, and yet has avoided indi• vidualism; she has kept clear of vagueness and melodrama and the many dangers whisk attend original writing, and she steers us, without bewilderment and with sympathy, to the least barren failure of the family. The Hebbertons numbered thirteen, and all their characteristics, even their physical features, must be discovered by our growing friend- kip. We come to love them all, for their faults as much as for their virtues; even the squire, who, in spite of his hard swearing and sulky egoism, is not without dignity and pathos; but most charming of all is the drawing, in subdued, adjec- tival tones, of the little mother, who lives only in the family life. It is evident that the writer's thoughts are much con- cerned with the problem of how, if at all, sexual questions should be presented to children. There is not a trace of unpleasantness in the book; only, as Sebastian loses through ignorance the purity of his youth and Pauline embarks on her unhappy marriage with the clergyman, who is incidentally the only unsatisfactory figure in the story, the present writer begins furiously to doubt the wisdom of modern methods.
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