John Andross. By Rebecca Harding Davis. (New York : Orange
Judd Company.)—The novels that reach us from across the Atlantic do not come in the pomp and circumstance of three volumes, and in our judgment, are all the better for it. The matter is more compressed, the work more careful. This modest-looking volume, for instance, con- tains more really meritorious writing and drawing of 'character than most of the second-rate tales which come to us from an English source. 'True, it is not always very easy to understand, but that is because it implies a knowledge of those mysteries of iniquities, the "Rings" of 'commercial and political life, which an English reader does not ordi- narily possess. But in its delineation of character it is manifestly true, and skilful sometimes to the point even of being masterly. John Andress, loveable, generous, and faithful even to the heroic point, but entangled by a weakness which pursues and grasps him as if it were the fate of a Greek tragedy ; Dr. Braddock, hard of aspect and manner, but capable of rare self-sacrifice; the craft and selfishness of Anna Maddox, under their fatally dangerous disguises of beauty and sim- ,plicity,--all these are admirably portrayed. So, again, is Mr. Laird, the unscrupulous leader of the Ring, but not wanting in kindly impulses and a conscience that acknowledges the presence of better things. On .every account, the book is worth reading, not least for the picture—not drawn, it must be remembered, by the unfriendly hand of a stranger— of legislative corruption in the trans-Atlantic democracies.
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