Tile Story of Three Sisters. By Cecil Maxwell. 2 vols.
(Smith, Elder, and Co.)—This is a novel of no common merit. Each of the three sisters is an excellent study of character ; Pamela, whom we may call the heroine par excellence, is a person who takes a place in one's memory. The growth of her nature, from the somewhat unmanageable and cross-grained child to the noble woman with whom we part with so much regret at the end of the tale, is delineated with much skill and feeling. If the tale is melancholy, yet the writer has the art of recon- ciling us to what we feel to be a necessary fate. Wo cannot help con- fessing that the fine nature of the gifted Pamela is not destined to the happiness which falls to the practical good-sense of Anne or the gentle worldliness of Emilia. But in truth the book gives us a whole gallery of lifelike portraits. Tho stern old grandmother, whose schemes for founding a family have been so signally defeated by the unlucky accident of the three sisters ; the good-natured, helpless father; the insufferably conceited heir, and the lively Julia ; sound sense incarnated in Joe, and unpractical genius in Harold Turrell ; all these are distinctly good, though it is impossible to give any true idea of a book by such extracts as wo have space for. Yet we cannot resist the temptation of giving one charming specimen of the author's manner. Pamela's engagement has been broken off, and her little niece finds her in tears :—" 'Auntie, dear, why are you hying so ? Did they give you nasty jam ?' she asked, with sudden recollection of her own small ill- nesses, and of powders administered under that seductive disguise.— ' No, Nancy. It isn't the powders ; but don't you cry when you have been naughty ?'—' Yes ; but you're not naughty, you're gown-up.' —' Ah ! I wish I were not grown up,' she sighed ; 'I wish I were only a little body like you, and had only done little naughtinossos that did not hurt anybody much ! You wouldn't love me any more if I were naughty, would you, Nancy ? ' Nancy had just filled her little rod mouth with a largo strawberry, and was deprived of the power of speech for the moment ; but she nodded her head gravely, and when the strawberry was gone, she said, with unusual distinctness, ' YeA, I suld, of course.' That was the truest bit of comfort Pamela found in her troubles."
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