An English Girl in Paris. (John Lane. (ls.)—It must be
premised that, like some other books which have from time to time enlivened this column, An English Girl in Paris is not, strictly speaking, a novel. It is rather a series of brilliant sketches strung on to a slender thread of fiction to keep them together. The book is amusing, but the language is a little wearying. The author when giving French conversations always translates, to use her own method, "at the foot of the letter." For instance, opening the book at a hazard, this sentence presents itself : "Me I like not the English system of so much liberty." Again: "But yes—true that." The latter sentence is a great favourite with the dramatis personae. This employment of a strange tongue, which perhaps it is permissible to describe as a new lingua franca, gives, of course, some local colour to the book, but it must be confessed that it is a little irritating to read in any quantity ; for which reason these pages will by most people be rather dipped into than read. A lurid light is shed on the disabilities of life in the appartement by the chapter on the concierge, who is a domestic tyrant of the most appalling description. Those con- cierges, however, whom the present writer has had the honour of knowing did not appear to be such ferocious monsters as here represented; but then the inmates of these gentlemen's houses main- tained a great silence on their habits, and doubtless they were as bad as their neighbours. There is also an appalling child in the book entitled le plit thou, whose ways surely surpass in "terrible" qualities those of any infant yet depicted in fiction. The whole book is rather like a souffle,—light, frothy, and, thank heaven! made of the most unexceptionable eggs.
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