A Pace Illumined. By Rev. E. P. Roe. (Ward, Lock,
and Co.)— Mr. Roe, an American writer of some note, will add to his reputation by this well-written and thoughtful work. The idea is novel, and the story is good throughout. A young artist, of refined taste and feeling, highly susceptible to beauty of face and form, is suddenly fascinated by the very lovely features of a young girl whom lie meets in a New York concert-garden. Convinced by nearer acquaintance that she is frivolous and vain, he forms the deliberate design to elevate and refine her mind, so as to bring it into accord with the grace and delicacy of the physical frame. The manner in which this object is accomplished—in part by means very different from those which the artist had devised—is admirably described. Awakened by degrees to the need of a higher and better life, and purified through much suffering, the heroine of the story becomes not only good in herself, but the instrument of good to others, above all to her father, who, wearied and disgusted by the past folly and selfish vanity of his only child, has tried to drown sorrow and disappointment in habitual intoxication. The chief agents in the reformation are a young school-teacher—whose lover was killed in the civil war—and an aged man, who, at the crisis of her fate, speaks to the unhappy girl, in a very simple and touching way, gentle words of Christian
counsel. The characters in the story are few, but they are well drawn; and although there is little .variety of scene—which is laid in or near a boarding-house in the neighbourhood of New York —the reader's attention and interest are sustained throughout. As in other American books, some of the colloquial expressions appear strange to an English ear. We read of "untangling the snarl of life ;" of "walking back and forth," where we should say "to and fro ;" of a father "loving his daughter some." But probably passages to be found in our own works of fiction may seem as strange—as they are certainly as inelegant—to American readers. We can cordially commend this book ; it would be a good and welcome companion to railway-travellers or sea-side sojourners at this holiday- time of the year.
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