The Celestial Surgeon. By F. F. Montr&or. (Edward Arnold. 6s.)—Miss
Montresor gives us a good deal of very pleasant writing in the new novel which she calls, after Stevenson's poem, The Celestial Surgeon. Her character-drawing is like life, in. that she paints very few of her characters either quite white or quite black ; they are mostly a neutral, shade of grey, and neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Even the person who has to pose as the villain of the piece, Dr. Wallace Mnalvert, has, though he is an unscrupulous adventurer, many redeeming points, and his conduct to the wife whom he has married for her money is a great deal better than any one would expect. The elderly hero—who, to amplify his own favourite pun on his name, is "a very true and perfect Knight "—is an attractive figure ; mat though it is a little difficult to believe that the heroine, Jeronimo would have been happy as the wife of so old a man, the reader is able to make the excuse that her marriage only lasted a very short time. "The Yellow House," which plays so largo a part in the story, is an attractive picture; and as a whole the novel may be pronounced full of a good deal of colour, though that same colour is in rather subdued shades.
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