Cecile; or, Modern Idolaters. By Hawley Smart. 3 vols. (Bentley.)—
We think too highly of- Mr. Smart's powers and entertain too pleasant recollections of what we have before seen from his pen to be able to express satisfaction with Cecile. A writer who can do, and indeed has done, so well ought to ho superior to the vulgar and objectionable ex- pedients by which he seeks to give an interest to his story. To keep a young woman throughout the length of a volume or more on the verge of breaking the Seventh Commandment, is a stimulus to the curiosity of readers which might be loft for the use of writers obliged to find what substitutes they can for missing wit. "Ernest Do Vitro," again, and his "dark, handsome face, with reckless, resolute eyes, and a latent sneer about his mouth," is a character from the repertoire of a well- known writer, of whom wo have had quite enough when we have en- countered him in the creations of his original author. The Mold:silts of the secret marriage and of the sudden catastrophe which terminates the
villain's career are nothing worse than inartiatie. It is surprising that is clover writer should condescend to the employment of stage properties which have been so well worn that they have passed, so to speak, from the tragic to the comic stage, and instead of appearing in serious tales have become the stock incidents ,of the burlesque. But the tone of the book offends against higher canons than those of art. There may be, and doubtless is, a section of society in which thia game' that Mr. Smart has taken so much pains to describe is played between foolish women and profligate man, but its doings are not worth record- ing. Or if they are made, as a great writer might make them, the subject of a tale, they should be treated in a loftier mood, and to some higher purpose than anything that we find here. Cecile, indeed, is cleverly written ; there are characters, the young soldier, for instance, who writes a novel in the desperate hope of pleasing his intellectual lady- love—and the said soldier's servant—which aro brightly and pleasantly drawn ; and there are bits of description, whether of sporting life or otherwise, which are interesting and picturesque, but of the book as a whole we cannot speak with favour.
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