The Snake's Pass. By Bram Stoker. (Sampson Low.)—The acting- manager
of the Lyceum has here followed up his excellent "Under the Sunset" with a good Irish story, full of storms, love, humour, dialect, villainy, and treasure-hunting. Miirtagh Murdock, the gombeen-man, who is, as is the case in most Irish novels, at once the most scoundrelly and the most important person in the book, is almost too repulsive, especially in the later stages of the story, when he attempts to murder the girl he professes, and even cherishes, a love for. In any case, Mr. Stoker might have spared us a little of the " cursing " in which the gombeen-man indulges every tenth page or so, even although his indulgence in the habit secures him several well-deserved thrashings. Irish character of to-day, or perhaps rather of yesterday, as represented by Andy the driver, and other characters, is well portrayed, and is besides cleverly contrasted with Saxon character, as impersonated chiefly by Arthur Severn, the somewhat too walking-gentlemanly hero. The great physical catastrophe by which the good people in the story are rendered happy, and the bad—or at least the worst— are finally disposed of, is very powerfully sketched. Altogether, Mr. Bram Stoker makes a very distinct advance as a novelist in The Snake's Pass.
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