THREE GOOD NOVELS.*
IT is but rarely that on reading three novels one can pronounce that they are all good. But such is the fortunate fate of the reader of the three books under review, perhaps because they • (1.) The Romance of a Ch.flet. By Mrs. Campbell Praed. London F. V. White and Co.—(2.) Conscience. By Hector Helot. Translated by Julia B. Rae, London : Richard Bentley and Bon.—(3.) A Merciful Divorce, By F. W. Maude. London; Trischler and Co.
and accordingly, after a short struggle (which his innamorata mistakes for doubt whether she is good enough for him, or he in
love enough for her), he engages himself after telling her the CURRENT LITERATURE. difficulty. But then an inquisitive and meddling person, who
the heroine, her plunging into society and engaging herself to which cheap mysticism, sickly sentiment, and unwholesome an Italian Prince, her recovery of her better self, and retire- ment to a nunnery on ascertaining the troth, form a tragic and well-drawn episode. " It is a mad world, my masters,"
but not quite so mad, we may hope, as Mrs. Praed has depicted ; least, is sadly wanting in womanly reticence and discretion,
but, given the improbability of scions of two mad families falling in love with each other, the book is powerful and life- like. The minor characters are very well done. girl of seventeen who at once responds to the advances of M. Hector Malot's book is, for him, a new departure. It is a man who is a perfect stranger to her, meets him after rather of the shilling-shocker school ; but it rises above that dark in a deserted church, and afterwards accompanies him to school in virtue of the psychological power displayed in it. It his rooms, where she lies with her head against his knee, " like is a study of the effects of remorse or the stings of conscience sweet Psyche wooed to voluptuous life in love's caress." This is on a doctor of eminent science and ability, who commits a nauseous enough, but even more offensive—indeed, positively revolting—is some of the conversation of that repulsive old murder, thinking himself superior to the ordinary dictates of morality, and disbelieving in conscience. He enters on the murder for the sake of money, with, as he imagines, perfect smearing her story over with the saliva of feminine cant," and sang-froid and scientific calculation, only to find that when he thus addresses his own daughter, Pamela Renfrew, who has is in it, he has not been able to anticipate all the difficulties ; accused him of a deliberate endeavour to ruin her married happi- while immediately he has done it, he finds that it was unnecessary, that his sang-froid has deserted him, and that he is in such constant fear of detection that he makes the most your bovine giant, and have had sleek pleasure out of it for years. stupid blunders. He escapes detection, however, through love with. Now I gratify my slower passions by upsetting it." Disgusting suspicion falling on the brother of the girl he is in He thinks he can get him off by his scientific evidence, but which seems to us as uninteresting as it is radically unhealthy.
discovers that he himself has been seen in the murdered man's The G ambler s Secret. By Percy Pendell. 2 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—The gambler with whose secret Mr. Fendall's story is house a few minutes before the murder is known to have been largely concerned, is a certain Colonel Lyle, who for one evening committed, by a paralysed lady for whom he is called in to has gone into partnership with a gentlemanly cardsharper, and prescribe. She recognises him, and he disposes of her. In netted by unfair play no less a sum than .27,000. The accomplice, spite of his evidence, the brother of his love is condemned. finding himself in pecuniary straits, blackmails the Colonel, who And then conscience and remorse, apart altogether from the allows him an income of £200 a year as the price of his silence,— fear of detection, awake. He is never detected, and becomes a rather weak concession, seeing that the blackmailer could only a man of the highest eminence in his profession. He marries expose his confederate by exposing himself. The whole business his love. But he finds his hell within him. The Erinnys becomes known to Lyle's eldest daughter, a high-principled and pursue him. His wife discovers the secret and leaves him. strong-minded girl, who compels her father to expatriate himself He is left outwardly successful, but prematurely aged, alone and settle down to a life of monotonous dullness in a Continental with his conscience. The book is a powerful study, drawn city. This !part of the story drags considerably, but its move- with strong and unswerving, one might say with pitiless, hand. ment is accelerated by the appearance upon the scene of Mrs. We should add that it is admirably translated, in natural and Dalrymple, an attractive but impecunious widow, with expensive
good English. tastes and a damaged reputation, who knows the Colonel's secret, Mr. Mande's book is of a very different style, and plots and schemes provide Mr. Pendell with the greater part its descent to every-day earth, after the somewhat rare- of his narrative material; and though his book is both fled atmosphere of the two other books, comes as a pleasant flimsy and unedifying, it has a certain briskness which will com- relief, like the clowns in a Shakespearian tragedy. It mend it to readers who only demand of a novel that it shall, is not, however, a .farce, but a genteel comedy. And, as provide them with a few hours of light entertainment.
usual in the genteel comedy, the hero and the heroine are not Santa Barbara, 4'c. By " Ouida." (Chatto and Windus.)—In particularly interesting characters, being of the adorably lovely many of the novels of the lady who chooses to be known as young woman and beautiful wax-moustached warrior type. " Ouida," there is much that is intensely repelling to readers who The young woman's immaculateness is perhaps a little cannot fairly be accused of squeamishness; but this objection marred by her marrying an elderly citizen to get £7,000 does not apply even to all her longer stories, while the short tales, to pay her father's debts, incurred by embezzlement. But as of which she has written a considerable number, are as a rule not that sort of thing is ordinarily done in a " society " novel, only negatively unobjectionable, but in many ways positively perhaps it rather adds to her charms in society. The minor charming. The pathos of such stories as "Two Little Wooden are all shorter than the ordinary novel. Mrs. Campbell characters are more lifelike. The Dowager Countess- who Praed's and M. Hector Malot's books are only two volumes, objects to new people and fashionable fastness, but has some and Mr. Maude's is only one. They belong, however, to three racy notions of her own, is an excellent character. The hero's
very different types. wife (No. 1, vice the heroine sold for £7,000) is an amusing
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