Frescoes. By "Oujda." (Chatto and Windus.)—" Ouida " has been
pleased to put certain novelettes into a dramatic form, and has achieved, we think, a considerable success with them. This is, of course, not more than what one might expect. Whatever this writer's faults, the lack of dramatic power is not one of them. If her charac- ters are such as we do not always recognise, or when we recognise them cannot always admire, the situations which she contrives for them are conceived and represented with ability. The first of these "dramatic sketches," from which the volume gets its title, tells how a young Italian painter came over to England to carry out a rich lady's whim for ornamenting the ball-room of her mansion with frescoes, and what the journey ended in. The story is told, and very well told, in letters ; in souse respects, the dénouement, or rather the discovery which leads to the ddnouement, is scarcely satisfac- tory, but the whole pleases and interests. The action in the second sketch, " Camaldoli," is slighter ; but here, too, the effect is good. There are two other sketches," "Afternoon" and "In Petti," and an essay, "Romance and Realism," which is the writer's apology for her conception of the novelist's art,—a subject on which we do not care just now to enter.
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