Sophie aetoe. 3 vols. (J. and 13. Maxwell.)—Sophie Crewe is
a toler- ably good novel, which does not fail to keep the attention fairly awake. The plot is not, indeed, very happily contrived, and might have been improved by the removal of some of the more painful characteristics. Ellen's flight is, under the circumstances, an unlikely incident, and if it was necessary to clear her out of the way to make room for a snore deserving successor, this might have been managed in a better manner. In fact, there is a general awkwardness about the marriage relations of the hero (if Frank Foster is the hero of the story). First, he is con- fronted by the "deceased wife's sister" difficulty. Then this difficulty is lightened (we are not lawyers enough to say whether it is cleared away) by the discovery that the elder sister was illegitimate, and finally, as if the doubt had arisen whether things were yet satisfactorily arranged, the somewhat threadbare device of a change of children at nurse is called in. It ia, however, only fair to say that the author has hinted before that this circumstance may have to be developed. Notwith- standing these faults, we have to thank the anonymous author of these volumes for a vigorous story, not without some felicity in the drawing of character.—With this we may class another novel, which deals not unsuccessfully with the love-affairs of four young women, of very diverse characters and circumstances, Four Schoolfellows, by the Author of "Little Miss Fairfax," 3 vols. (C. J. Skeet), is a story which is never dull, and which rises into an interest quite above that com- monly attained in the third volume. The four companions are care- fully drawn figures, which we recognise at once as natural. And it is no common praise to say that the men are not the mere lay figures with which lady novelists often are contented to fill up necessary parts in their dramas of life, but are in their way as good as are the young ladies with whom they have to do. We may single out, perhaps, for notice Sir William Cameron, whom we quite admire, when, like the worm in the proverb he turns at last upon the haughty beauty who has treated him with such scorn, and is aatonished to find him not at her beck when she condescends to give him a more favourable notice.
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