The Carylls. By Sir Francis Vintent, Bart. 8 vols. (T.
C. Newby.)— We were somewhat puzzled by the first two volumes of this novel. They introduce us to a number of people, lords and ladies for the most part, who are fairly well drawn, at all events are not caricatured, and who talk very much as they would talk in actual life. This is all very well, and affords no ground for criticism except, indeed, for the general quos- tion,—what is the good of writing all this down ? One might as well take down in shorthand the talk of any ordinary set of people and give at the same time a chronicle of their doings, and call it a novel. There is no possible reason why the book should have ever been begun, and none why it should ever come to an end, except indeed with the world, in which also men and women eat and drink and talk and marry and are given in marriage. In the third volume the author apparently wakes up to the conviction that something must be done, that there must be something like a plot and a catastrophe. Two or throe of the ordinary people are picked out as victims, and suddenly turned into something quite extra- ordinary. A young lady who seemed open to no charge except that she is somewhat insipid and common-place, is brought to the verge of bigamy, from which she only rescues herself by committing suicide ; and a gentleman whom we actually thought to be very cantankerous and dis- agreeable, we discover to be a most atrocious villain. lie is not far from committing murder, leaving arranged to fight a duel with the hero with- out seconds, but he also is rescued from crime by the same resource of suicide. After all, we like the earlier part the bettor. We prefer the photograph of even the flattest and dullest turnpike-road to that of a gallows,
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