Berna Boyle. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell. 3 vols. (Hurst
and Blackett.) —It is seldom that a novelist changes her accustomed field of action with a success so complete as Mrs. Riddell has attained in this very pleasing book. She leaves the City for the county Down, and gives us, according to the promise on her title-page, a "love-story" pure and simple. Berne is a beautiful girl, well descended on her father's side, but afflicted with a mother whose silliness and vulgarity reach almost to the bounds of caricature. Her lover's social position has something of the same inequality. His father is a particularly dis- agreeable specimen of the Ulster farmer, who had persuaded a young lady of good birth to elope with him. It is a case with both of them of "love at first-sight" (an emotion not quite intelligible on the young lady's part), and the obstacle which hinders their happiness results from the difficulties of their social position. Berna feels BO acutely the inconvenience of a nu!salliance, that she resolutely seta her face against making the experiment in her own person. The situation is worked out with mach skill, and affords the opportunity of giving some delineations of Irish character which are not the less interesting because they differ considerably from the conventional models. Mrs. Riddell accentuates too strongly, we think, the odious peculiarities of Mrs. Boyle ; otherwise her studies are executed with much truthfulness and subtlety. Generally, the novel may be read with more than usual interest; nor can we wish anything away, except, it may be, some lectures on politics for which we cannot recognise in the author any peculiar aptitude.
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