Not Angels Quite. By Nathan Haskell Dole. (Gay and Bird.)
—There is a curious mixture of materials in this tale. Love is the chief ingredient. We have two engaged couples whose engagements are broken off. Happily hearts are not broken as well. For in the very last page of the novel we find I married to B, and B married to A (it will be understood that A was engaged to A, and B to B). Besides love, we have clairvoyance ; we have a number of bad puns, which Mr. Dole attributes to his heroes in a somewhat unprincipled way ; we have poetry of tolerable quality. The text is occasionally of the " Rose- Matilda " kind. One young lady, after behaving somewhat badly, we cannot but think, to her lover, addresses to Heaven a prayer, kneeling beside her bed "in her lace-trimmed night-robe.". That " lace-trimmed " is very touching. Afterwards her con- science begins to assert itself ; but her aunt is equal to the occasion, and smoothes "the girl's feverish brow with her hand wet in alcohol." Happy delicacy of female organisation that is soothed or smoothed with "external application only."
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