Ida Milton; or, "To Be, or Not To Be." By
Graham Stephenson. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—The momentous question is whether Ida Milton is or is not to be the wife of Walter Hervey, a young gentleman with whom she has fallen in love at first sight. At first it seems likely that "Not to be " will be the answer, and the young lady revenges herself by desolating Scotland, where she unluckily happens to be living, by the combined effects of her beauty and haughtiness, as no English army ever desolated it in the good old times. After this, there are various vicissitudes, which were probably interesting to the actors, but which the dispassionate reader, who has to take the glamour of Ida's eyes and all the rest of the romantic circumstances on trust, certainly finds very tedious. There is nothing objectionable in this tale, except it be an objeetion that it lacks good-sense, and humour, and incident, and truthfulness to nature, and everything that a novel ought to have.
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