A Garrison Romance. By Mrs. Leith-Adams. (Eden, Reming- ton and
Co.)—This is a good story, of course about love rather than war, for such is the wont of military romances, but satisfactory in its construction, and told with force. Mr. Jones, the "out- sider," as some of his fashionable acquaintances were pleased to call him, is the hero, though not the one who wins the honours, and makes a very attractive character. The old problem, "Is a girl justified in marrying a man whom she does not love to help her family ? " is proposed in these pages, and solved in as satis- factory a manner as can be expected.—Punchinello's Romance.
By Roma White. (A. D. Innes and Co.)—This is another good story. " Punchinello " is a deformed man who has loved unhappily.
He, Dorothy his ward, and "Jim Taylor," the man who rises from the ranks, are the chief characters. In the tone of the book we recognise something of Charles Kingsley's spirit; but there is nothing like imitation of matter or style.— Under Other Con- ditions. By the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, M.A. (A. and C. Black.)—This is a romance in which the preternatural element is curiously mixed up with science, theology, modern politics. The book is clever enough to show some reading and thought ; but the readers to whom it will appeal are not numerous —Maker's Dream, and other Stories. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—This is a volume of "The Pseudonym Library." It is a Russian story, and, indeed, is the first of a proposed series under this title. It has the charac- teristic of gloom which seems to belong to this kind of literature. The tales, three in number, are of varying quality and merit, but they agree in this.--Sunset Pass. By Captain Charles King. (Gay and Bird.)—This is a spirited story of adventure in the Far West of the States, in the days when the dangers of travel were greater than they are now. Captain Gwynne determines to take his party, including his two children, eastward through the country of the Apaches, by a route of which Sunset Pass is the most dangerous point, and very nearly comes to grief in doing so.—Another volume of American origin is Iduria, and other Stories, by George A. Hibbard (James R. Osgood). Here are six short stories, not without merit, but certainly marred by eccentricities of style. A flash of lightning is described as "a starting sinew in the arm of G,x1."—Chapters in my Wife's History, by H. S. K. Bellairs, M.A. (Digby and Long), certainly suggests the remark that there is nothing that people will not write about. A husband who describes how his wife began life by eloping with a groom, must have the cacoethes seribendi in an aggravated form.
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