treatment. A stranger, Mr. Harold, comes to settle in the
heroine's
neighbourhood. At first he is reserved ; then he seems to yield to her attractions; finally he proposes marriage, and is accepted. He had held aloof because a marriage foolishly contracted in his youth bound him ; he comes forward when he believes the bond to have been dis- solved by death. Of course the bad wife terns up, and we close the volume on the resignation of the unhappy lovers, without being per- mitted to hope for the obstacle's removal. It is not easy for those who remember the delicacy and pathos with which Thackeray has dealt with the same complication in " Pendenuis," where George Warrington, entangled by the same fatal mistake, tells his story to Laura, to be satisfied with the treatment of the same subject by another writer, yet we gladly acknowledge the taste and good feeling with which Miss Craik uniformly writes.
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