A Hidden Chain. By Dora Russell. 3 vols. (Digby, Long,
and Co.)—We know pretty well what to expect from Dora Russell's pen,—a love-story with all the details, conversations, feelings of everybody reported in the fullest manner. Her characters move in a circumscribed sphere, and page after page has to be waded through by those who have no other occupation, describing the sort of endearment which, we are told in another place, is not meant for profane ears. Some scenes in A Hidden Chain are described with a certain power ; the grief of the young man who comes home to find that his father has died while he was enjoying his honeymoon, is a very genuine thing, and his mingled despair and wrath at finding that his sweet young wife has deceived him, being already married, is also graphically placed before us. While much that is necessary and unnecessary is duly expanded, some of the commoner facts of life are apparently ignored, or if they are brought in, brought in to reveal the writer's ignorance. A man cannot, for instance, smoke several cigars in three-quarters of an hour. However, there are one or two dramatic scenes in A Hidden Chain, and Madame de Cimhri and Ford, the unscrupulous banker, are good minor characters.
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