A Woman's Glory. By Sarah Dandney. 3 vols. (Bentley and
Son.) —" To love perfectly and entirely,—that is a woman's glory." This is Miss Doudney's summing-up of the whole matter, and she works up to this conclusion with a good deal of skill. She provides herself with plenty of characters to deal with. There are two who divide between themselves the part of heroine ; there is an evil-minded woman of the Circe kind, who makes a weak-kneed Ulysses stray from the right path ; there is a doubtful person, half good, half bad, who betrays her dearest friend, because she feels sure that her love for the friend's betrothed is the deeper and the more genuine of the two affections ; and there are two minor persons, each sketched with a certain individuality. All have, of course, love-affairs of their own, and some have more than one. We must confess to a slight feeling of weariness at reading so much of a matter which, after all, is not the whole, or even the greater part, of life. But Miss Doudney's skill in managing her story, and the evident truth of her drawing, slight as is the plot, does away, for the most part, with this impression. And she introduces episodes or varieties which give a certain relief. Eunice Swift, the authoress, makes an attractive picture. Her unhappiness at home, with a family circle all worshipping the daughter who has made a rich marriage, and tormenting the girl whose genius it cannot perceive, and the bright blossoming of her life when she finds her proper sphere of action elsewhere, are admirably described. Mr. Swift, the father, and Mrs. Goad, the rich daughter, are touched with a really effective humour. Then there is an amus- ing child, who entertains us very well for a few pages. Add to this that Miss Doudney always writes well, and that her book is thoroughly wholesome in tone, and we may safely say that A Woman's Glory rises considerably above the average of the novel.
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