NOVELS. — The Ambassador Extraordinary. 3 vole. (Bentley.)— The reader may get
no little enjoyment out of these three volumes,
if he does not trouble himself to make out the plot, to identify the characters, or generally to understand what it is all about. Our own experience has been this,—that beginning the book in the usual orthodox fashion, we found progress difficult, not to say impossible.
If one is going on straight, it is natural to wish to know whither one is going, and for what object ; and this is a curiosity that is not easily gratified in a reader of the Ambassador Extraordinary. But any one who dips into the book, and will be content to road what he finds, without inquiring particularly hoW it is joined to what goes before, what is to follow; and what it moans, will bo often amused, and sometimes find an interest that is better than mere entertainment. The antiquarian zeal of " Master Georgius," the architect, who bates the " modern " with so cordial a hatred, is described in a most amusing way ; while the picture of the firo at Rosemary Gardens is very striking. It is difficult to estilnato the literary value of a book which can only be judged in fragments, but we can at least say with bonfldcnce that it gives in- dications of power which may, wo hope, on some future occasion be more profitably employed.—A Great Lady, translated from the Gorman of Dowell by Mrs. M. B. Harrison. (Samuel Tinsley.)—The "great lady" is a beauty, who has married a Russian General, much older than herself. In the caprice of a nature which has never known to resist the promptings of its own desires, she makes love to a young officer on her husband's staff, compromises herself by giving him
a watch, which bad been one of her husband's most cherished posses.
sions, and seeks to save her good name by accusing him of steal- big it. All this makes a striking story, not without its moral,
for the young officer is a man of honour, ruined by a weak submis-
sion to a worthless woman. But wo must express our surprise that tin English lady could reproduce sonic of the scenes which the author whom she translated has thought fit to describe. If she felt that to suppress thorn was more than a translator could venture to do, the only alternative was to decline the task altogether.
A secondary plot, which greatly relieves the darkness of the story, is drawn from the incidents of the Polish insurrection.— Shadrach. 3 vols. (Bell and Sons.)—There is a certain nobility about the central figure of this story which may be fairly set, against
its faults, and which indicates a creative power in the writer, not unlikely to be turned some day to good account. The story, if wo may
trust our own experience, does not take the attention of the reader with any power of attraction. Its range of interest is too limited, while the more unusual incidents which are intended to relieve it do little more than excite a certain languid incredulity. The style is a somewhat curious study. It is sometimes so stiff and awkward as to suggest the idea of a translation from some foreign original. At other times, it is unmistakably English. Imagiue it being said, at a somewhat grave sentimental crisis, that the heroine "pulled herself together." Why, may wo ask, is this same heroine, after the trials of her maiden-life, given this surfeit of domestic bliss ?—" Her six-months-old baby was visible her little May, a child under two years old, was playing at her feet ; a bonnier boy of three was running about the grounds," &c. This betrays the• female authorship. It is not a man's ideal, at all.
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