Martin Tobin. A novel. By Lady Campbell. Three volumes. (John
Maxwell and Co.)—An average novel, the object of which is rather to give a picture of Now Zealand in the early days of the settle- ment than to present life from its ideal side. There is really no at- tempt at a plot. At the conclusion the hero helps to induce his first
love to marry somebody else, and, himself a widower, goes back to Eng- land with no object in particular. So we are told that the hero's father, who pleads guilty to having deserted his wife, robbed his friend of both wife and money, and shot a rival in the affections of the latter lady " like a dog," has cleared his character, but this does not seem very possible in the circumstances, and one feels a not unnatural desire to know how.
These longings, however, Lady Campbell does not satisfy, any more than
she lets us know what becomes of Black, the Englishman who has turned Maori, and is the villain of the tale. As some compensation for all this reticence, however, we get a description of colonial life which must, we think, be the work of an eye-witness, or at least, if it is not, is deserving of the very highest praise. Still, however real, the pic- ture is not a very agreeable one, and leads the reader to suppose either that New Zealand must have been very unlike other colonies, or else that colonists in general are a singularly unscrupulous kind of people.
But the authoress takes care to let us know that there were very many exceptions. Her sympathies are decidedly with Colonel Wakefield and the New Zealand Society, and the Governor, Captain Fitzroy, is depicted in no flattering colours.
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