The Little Ladies. By Helen Mihnan. (Griffith, Farran, and Co.)—"
This is not a love-story," is the first clause in Miss Braman's first chapter. That promised well; there is a great deal too much about love in those books that are meant for children. But the promise is not kept. There are two love-stories. Earl Claremont dies shortly after his wife, leaving two twin-daughters to the care of his sister-in-law. Gaston Remaly, the cousin who succeeds to the title, falls in love with this said sister-in-law, and, after some difficulties raised by her sense of duty to the orphans, marries her. The girls grow up, and then there is another love- story. Guy Saville loves Neste, and Nona, who has been lamed by an accident, loves him; or, rather, he begins by loving Nona, who returns his affection, but knowing that she cannot marry, refuses him, whereupon he transfers his love. Nesta is very capricious ; but the inevitable bank-failure occurs, and drives her into declaring her affection. This is pretty well, and then we have, as an episode, the hopeless affection of the clergyman for the first young lady. But "this is not a love-story," says Miss Braman. There is a good deal, we own, about the children, and pleasant reading too; but love is really the staple of the book. Miss E. F. Harding, who illustrates the book, has an idea of making pretty pictures; but she must really learn to distinguish ages with her pencil. The new Earl on p. 35 (described as "somewhere about forty ") looks like seventeen, or, if something indistinct on his lip is a moustache, might be put at two-and-twenty. Four pages afterwards he is thirty ; another interval, this time of eighteen pages, brings him back to twenty or thereabouts. Sybil on p. 92 does not look more than seventeen ; but she must be nearly ten years older. But the faults of the drawing on P. 143 are more serious than any mistake as to age. How it can have come from the same hand that gives us the very pretty frontispiece, is past comprehension.
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