Love Without Wings. By Mrs. Adolphe Smith. 8 vols. (Tinsley
Brothers.)—It is friendship, as the French proverb tells us, that is "love without wings," and the object of this story is to show how durable and powerful a thing it may be. It introduces us to two men who are close friends, bound by no common obligations a benefits on the one side and gratitude on the other. But they love the same woman. She had been engaged in former days to the poorer of the two, and had now promised to become the wife of the richer, who was indeed ignorant of the old attachment. We cannot say much for the plot. The mistake which causes the estrangement between Eleanor and her first lover might happen, but it could scarcely have remained uncorrected. No woman in her senses would throw over a lover whom she had once believed in on the strength of anonymous accusations, and that without giving him any opportunity of defence. Misunderstandings and mistakes are commonly the weakest part of a novelist's machinery. Apart from this, the story has a certain interest and dramatic power, the darker shades being relieved by the gaiety and brightness of Madge, who amuses one by the energy with which she sets her mother and her convenances at defiance.
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