28 DECEMBER 1867, Page 21

The White Cockade. By Ames Grant. (Routledge.)—A brisk. dashing, and

animated novel, if the reader has the knack of skipping the parts which do not answer to this definition. But there is a good deal to be skipped, and what remains is not marked by much inherent probability or consistency. However, Mr. James Grant counts on the excitement produced by a quick succession of incidents as likely to blind his readers to any faults of style and to any lack of distinctive character. What with treacherous magistrates and pious villains, what with murders and rumours of murder, imprisonments and hairbreadth 'scopes, we are carried on rapidly from first to last, and if the whole novel is a faint copy of Scott, it possesses some of Scott's powers of story-telling.