A Woman of Shawmut. By Edmund James Carpenter. (Osgood, McIlvaine,
and Co.)—Tbis is a carefully written and very neatly illustrated romance of Colonial times in America, based on historical facts. Ezekiel Bolt and Penelope Pelham, both brought up in the sanctity, and using the language, of Massachusetts Puritanism, are seen, in the almost too daintily idyllic first chapter, plighting their troth in the forest of Rocksbury and in the village of Shawmut. But, Puritan as she is, Penelope is not proof against the tempter who offers her commonplace position and wealth. He takes the form of the ambitious and capable politician Bellingham, who rises high enough to fill the post, first of Deputy-Governor and then of Governor, of Massachusetts. Bellingham, to secure Penelope, destroys the happiness of the young Ezekiel, who is at this time his private secretary, and who, brokenhearted, falls back on the bumble trade of fisherman. Bellingham and his wife, how- ever, suffer for their treachery. They are never forgiven by their neighbours, and they lose their family one after another. The tragedy of these three lives is, indeed, very beautifully, and, at the same time, very simply told. Nothing better of its rather uncommon kind has lately been published on the other side of the Atlantic.
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