Love Like a Gipsy. By Bernard Capes. (Constable and Co.
6e.)—In Love Like a Gipsy one is struck by the bold originality of manner and matter, — an originality that fascinates, a boldness that sometimes repels. Against the hero, Anthony St. John, there is nothing to object. But the Wodens family group—consisting of the Earl of Borro- daile, half-child and half-lout, though of years of discretion ; the slovenly foreign mother of stage antecedents ; and the mountebank Jemmy Glover, who dresses like a chaplain and occupies the post of tutor to the Earl and factotum to the Earl's mother—becomes offensive when the explanation of its bisarreris is given. The mother, in days of poverty, sold her boy to the im- presarios, and he is—what even the mountebank finds it difficult to explain to St. John. Upon this point a question of inheritance hangs. The other crucial point of the plot is the belief of St. John that he has killed the mother of the girl he falls in love with. In the beginning of the story the scene is in Canada. It is the time of the American War of Independence, and a Mr. Henbery, heir-presumptive to the Borrodaile earldom, has gone out as Commissioner. He is obliged to leave his wife at a critical moment in a critical situation, and he charges St. John, in case of surprise by Indians, to shoot her. The emergency arrives, St. John enters the lady's bedroom, does his duty,—and, having done it, flies. The denouement comes slowly, with plenty of romantic incident by the way. The love-making is pretty, and the whole narrative is penetrated by the spirit of poetry and romance. But for the introduction of the disagreeable element already alluded to, and occasional lapses into Meredithian intelligibilities of style, we should have nothing but praise to give to Mr. Capes's novel.
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