Heart's Delight. By Charles Gibbon. 3 vols. (Chatto and Windus.)—We
may rely upon Mr. Gibbon, whether he elects to place his scene in our own days or in the time of the Stuarts, to give us an interesting and wholesome story, and we are not disappointed of our expectation in Heart's Delight. Sir George Kerr, a nouveau riche, the desire of whose heart it is to become connected with the peerage, takes up the cause of one Wardlaw, who claims to be the representa- tive of an earldom that is supposed to be extinct, with the idea that the Earl, his dignity once attained, will marry his daughter. The daughter, however, has, it will be guessed, other things in her head, and the usual complications follow. Mr. Gibbon contrives the plot skilfully enough, and it being allowed that the novelist's world is a little more full of surprises than that in which most of us live, does not transgress the limits of probability. The story is full of incident, and becomes even exciting with its rapid changes. No one who has begun it will be inclined to leave it unfinished. The " Chevalier " whose claim to be a descendant of the Stuarts is introduced (was he not demolished by the Quarterly some forty years ago ?), and Ward- law's connection with the " Invincibles," are the weakest things in the book.
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