Lady Beatrix and the Forbidden Man. (Harper and Brothers. 39.
6.1.).-The anonymous author of Lady Beatrix and the Forbidden Man writes with a jaunty and flippant vulgarity to which we are getting only too much accustomed. This kind of book seems amazingly popular with people who like to hear of the imaginary doings of imaginary Peers,—for hardly any one whose name is not in the Debrett of fiction is allowed to figure in its pages. The device is an old one. "Suppose," as Thackeray says in " 'Vanity Fair," "we had laid, the scene in Grosvenor Square, with the very same adventures,—would not some people have listened ? Sup- pose we had shown how Lord Joseph Sedley fell in love, and the Marquis of Osborne became attached to Lady Amelia, with the full consent of the Duke her noble father," &c., &c. The veriest commonplaces seem to suffice when served up with this patrician sauce. Lady Beatrix is a most frankly vulgar book, and though it attempts to be cheery, the present writer confesses to having yawned over it.
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