Life's Tapestry. 2 vols. (Skeet.)—For obvious reasons, we seldom review
works which, as is the case with Life's Tapestry, announce themselves as " second editions." The words would seem to imply such an amount of success as makes praise or blame superfluous. And there is the risk to b3 avoided of breaking the consistency of opinion which is becoming to a journal by expressing an opinion diverse from that which some other critic may have put forth. This last risk we shall run without much fear. Life's Tapestry seems to us almost as disagreeable a novel as we have seen for some time. There is only one character in it for whom one can feel the slightest interest, and he comes to a violent end in the most useless and purposeless way. Worldly women and profligate mon are the figures that make up this picture of life, a dreary and melancholy sight, not relieved by the attempt which the author makes to introduce a humorous element, in the unjust and odious caricature of a religious woman which we find in Mrs. Paynter. "What manner of men," says the author, in a few sentences of epilogue, can they be who would that this world should remain for ever, and that they might find their heaven therein,—this world, with its short pleasures, short and yet palling, its littleness, its scandal, its envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness ?" And then she goes on, with a religious air which is far more nauseous than any of the mock piety which she has tried to satirise, to thank the Most Merciful that there is another world, a world of many mansions, &c. Does she think to make the world better by showing it pictures of its meanest and basest things ? There are books which, without any invocation of holy names, have done something, by setting forth things lovely and of good report, to make this life, somewhat sweeter and nobler. A book like this can but do something, very little, we trust and believe, but yet something, to make it fouler and baser.
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