Marina: or, the Mystery of Robesdale. By R. Sebright Scholes.
(London Literary Society.)—There is an air of crudeness about the construction and telling of this story which prevents us from according to it much praise. To arrive at the solution of the mystery in this tale, the author introduces several incidents which are left un- accounted for, or, at best, with just sufficient light thrown upon them to help the reader in his conjectures. Robesdale is an old, untenanted country house, believed by the people around to be haunted, but in reality used by a gang of thieves as their head- quarters. In a park near this place a little girl and her murdered mother are discovered on a dark and stormy night. The landlord of a neighbouring inn adopts the child, and Wilson Burgess, a young man staying at the inn, having heard the child's story, is seized with a desire to unravel the mystery surrounding it. After a time the girl is stolen ; but Wilson is shown her place of concealment in a dream. This incident is, we think, outside art. In the end, Wilson marries the girl, after caring for her education, and she tarns out to be the heiress of Robesdale ; but strange to say, in the days of their court- ship, the author speaksof them as young persons, when Burgess mast have been a man of forty at least. There are large gaps in the setting-forth of the story left to be filled up by the reader's imagina- tion; and the dialogue is scant, tending little to the development of the plot or the elucidation of the characters.
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