The Secret Orchard. By Agnes and Egerton Castle. (Mac- millan
and Co. 6s.)—The manner of The Secret Orchard is so stagey that if one did not know that the book had been a story before it was made into a play for Mr. and Mrs. Kendal to act, one would suspect that this order of genesis had been reversed. The situation is "strong," and of the sort that used to be called "French." And it is developed as such situations are apt to be in French plays, to an end of moral and religious edification by means of the strain-ed innocence of the good woman who is the saving influence. Four American characters—a bluff sailor ; vulgar woman, his mother, remarried and rewidowed by a French Marquis ; Helen, the ingl:nue wife of the Duke of Cluny ; and a smart little woman of the world—introduce an element and a dialect that make an odd contrast with the French setting and scene. Nerne Rodriguez is in truth intolerably vulgar and tire - some. The interest centres round the girl Gioya, who is adopted by the saintly Duchess in the belief that she is an innocent girl. But the girl's true character—shortly expressed by them all as "the devil "—reveals itself unmistakably, in the first full glance of her eyes, to the Duke, his friend Favereau, and the country doctor. To the Duke she is already too well known, and he finds the punishment of all his sins in the necessity, now forced upon him by a false conception of honour, of concealing this former knowledge from his wife. The complication works itself out in tragedy; and the Duke pays the forfeit of his life in a duel with the American sailor. The character of Cluny is well done. But surely it is utterly false to life to deny the Ithuriel instinct that reads character—good and bad—only to the two clean souls of
the story,—the good and generous Duchess, and the honest American sailor. Milton taught otherwise, and so did Thackeray when be made Dobbin the only person in "Vanity Fair" who was never fooled by Becky Sharp.
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