Rose of the World. By Agnes and Egerton Castle. (Smith,
Elder, and Co. 6s.)—Instead of their usual airy romances of the eighteenth century, Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle have given us in their new novel a curious mental study of modern life. Consider- ing the astonishing developments of which the human mind is capable, it would be rash to say that the conduct of the heroine is unnatural ; but the authors certainly do not succeed in making it altogether credible. That a woman who has been too selfish to love her dead husband (for this is what the fine phrases about the girl having been " unawakened " come to) should decline to read his diary and papers when sent her by his comrades may be possible. But that the same woman, having meantime made a marriage of ambition, should, when forced to read the papers five years afterwards, fall so deeply in love with the dead that she feels the touch of her living husband to be a sacrilege, is not quite so easy to believe. It would be unfair to touch upon the further development of the plot, in which the authors contrive to raise the interest of their readers to a considerable height. But the remark may be permitted that the unfortunate second husband, the bore of the book, was very ungratefully and badly treated alike by the heroine and by Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Castle. He could not be expected to know that he was a bore, and must have been serenely unaware that he was being married for any but the most romantic of reasons. He treated his wife as well as, according to his lights, he was able, and it is therefore rather hard that he should be held up in the last chapter to the hatred, ridicule, and contempt of all the characters in the book.
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