11 FEBRUARY 1888, Page 24

Neck or Nothing. By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. (F. V.

White.)— This is a pretty little story of a young gentleman who loses all his money, and a favourite mare which he had intended, much against his will, to sell, and which is killed in the hunting-field, and, en revanche, wins a wife who more than makes up to him for both. Jack Maynard, an eminent example of the class "who are nobody's enemies but their own," gets, we think, far more than be deserves. That would have been to break stones on a Colonial road, or black shoes in a Colonial hotel. Still, it is well for us all that we do not get our deserts. And in any case, Mrs. Cameron tells the story of the good-for-nothing in a pleasant fashion. There is nothing of the "elective affinities" kind about the book.