Amor Vincit. By Mrs. R. S. Garnett. (Duckworth and Co.
6s.) —Mrs. Garnett has written a fine story. It is long and, for the most part, sombre, but it keeps a high level. The scene is laid among moors and mines in the wilder parts of Staffordshire half a century ago. Amid these rugged surroundings the writer has made her strongly drawn characters live without a touch of melodrama. Richard Hollingsclough makes a mistaken marriage, and trouble after trouble comes upon him. His vain but idealized wife soon dies, and he knows that she never cared for him, but only for a physically magnificent rival. The same rascal ruins her brother, to whom Richard devoted himself for the sake of her memory, and after wreaking his spite in countless ways proceeds to make Richard the most bated man in the neighbourhood : he leaves him nobody or nothing but a dog to care for, and then with diabolical malice seduces even the dog's affection. Only at the end does the light break with the promise of a new and happier life for Richard. In the other characters the unquenchable passion of his old nurse and relative, Hannah, the violence of the rough miners, and the rude natures of the farm labourers are drawn with steady power.
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