Excelsior : a Story. By Montorio. (A. P. Blundell and
Co.)— This tale tells the adventures, full of romance, of a fatherless girl and a motherless boy, both only half English. It is vividly and pictorially, if not exactly well written, and many of the incidents are most sensational, particularly those occurring in Naples and Sicily. Both hero and heroine are morally excellent, and unworldly and unconventional to the last degree ; but these very qualities of theirs bring them into a kind of companionship and into a corrupt atmo- sphere which make their story unsuitable for the young. The philosophy, of which there is a good deal, seems to consist of a pre- sentation as an ideal of the Christian flower and fruit, without its very indispensable root. It is pervaded also by a peculiar idea about an informing and self-creative spirit, inhabiting not only those objects we call living, but also rocks and stones, which seems to recall the Greek mythology, with a difference. There is a very true apprecia- tion of the reality of things, in the contrast between the smooth and happy life of the heroine's sister, who could not "do or dare " any- thing beyond the common routine, and the troubled life and sad end of the more aspiring character.
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