CURRENT LITERATURE.
Disturbing Elements. By Mabel C. Birchenough. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—Disturbing Elements is not likely to cause any mental excitement in the mind of the reader, but for all that it is a pleasant enough story wherewith to beguile a lazy afternoon. If it is, as we believe, a first venture, it is a very creditable one. It is well thought out and well put together, and the style is easy and unpretentious. It is the story of the disturbance caused in a French family by the advent of two distant English relations, one of whom is a handsome popular student from a woman's college called Bronte Hall, and the troubles she brings on herself and them with the best intentions. Of the characters, which are all more or less distinctly conceived, that of the heroine's college friend, Kitty Winter, and of the clever, shrewd French mother who practically conducts the business of the banking firm of which her husband was the head, are much the best. The character of the aristocratic and beautiful English grandmother is not nearly so clearly realised and vigorously painted as that of the Frenchwoman. The picture of French domestic life is very good, and reads as if it were drawn by one who has shared the life and knows it thoroughly.
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