In the West Countrie. By Mary Crommelin. 3 vols. (Hurst
and Blackett.)—This story is in the shape of an autobiography, and an autobiography is not an easy form of narrative to manage.
Heroines who describe themselves are very apt to fall into a self- depreciation which covers but very thinly a great deal of self-assertion.
They tell us they are plain, for instance, "ugly ducklings," and so forth; but let us understand that they turn, sooner or later, into great beauties. Pleasance Brown is not wholly free from these faults; but she does not show them in any offensive way, and in describing others she is often very happy. Alice, the beauty, is perhaps a little too bad. A monied woman who bitterly reproaches her sister for taking away her admirers from her, and this in more than one case, is, perhaps, a possibility ; but it would have been better for the sister to have left her as much as possible out of her story. The other sister, Rose, is a pleasanter sketch ; indeed, we have the bad-taste to prefer her to the somewhat sentimental young lady who tells the story of her family. The widow Jessopp could hardly have been as rode as she is represented. Mrs. Gladman and "Aunt Bess," on the other hand, are excellent sketches. For the male characters we have not much praise, excepting the " March Hare," who, we venture to say, has his prototype somewhere in life, and who is certainly worth a regiment of Clair St. Legere and Fulke Bracys. On the whole, the story, though wanting the distinctness and force of " The Orange Lily," a work where Miss Crommelin seems more at home than she does in the volumes before us, has considerable merit. One question we would respectfully ask,—Is it true that among the wonders of the "West Countrie" is to be found a "Saxon Hall." It would be news to most of us that we have a specimen of domestic architecture dating so far back. The " Saxon" hall is still habitable when we part with our heroine.
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