The Letter of Recommendation : a Romance of the Levant.
By Frank P. Worth. 2 vols. (Effingham Wilson.)—This is a love story of the ordinary kind, with the usual misunderstandings, the young man sup- posing that the lady is interested in some one else, the lady believing a false charge which has been brought against her lover. The scene, it is true, is laid in the Levant, but it might have been laid anywhere else. All that we see in the book specially connected with the Levant, is the lamentation which one Pericles makes over the degradation of his race. The humorous characters, Mr. Tom Careless. who has a habit of indis- criminate love-making, and Mrs. Roberts, a sort of Mrs. Malaprop, are caricatures not of a first-rate kind. But the thing in the book that is not tolerable is the conceit; the intercalated chapters of supposed criticism on the story being about as offensive as anything of the kind that we have ever seen.
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