The M - orrices ; or, the Doutitful Marriage. Dy G. T.
Lowth. 8 vols. (Hurst and Blaokott.)—Mr. Lowth's story might have been told without much difficulty, or the loss of any material part of the nine hundred odd pages which he has devoted to It. On the whole, however, we are not sorry that ho has preferred the longer method of tolling It, for he always writes in a gentlemanly, scholarly fashion, and sometimes writes very well. The story indeed is of the simplest. The hero, who lives by the banks of the Thames near Fulham, hears the cry of a puppy which is being carried down by the stream, and is in imminent danger of drown- ing. He plunges in and has just saved the creature, when its owner, the daughter of a bargeman, rowed by a quasi-cousin, appears on the none, and °Iodine it. The hero falls in love with the young lady, and the cousin does not like it. Oddly enough, the hero's father, who is a man of wealth and culture, does like it, or anyhow, does not object. So the common obstacle in the course of love, the obsti- nately adverse father, is taken out of the way. The cousin only remains, and ho certainly exerts himself, committing one murder and doing his host to commit another, by way of stopping the too prosperous flow. But the interest of the book is not in the story. There is plenty without this that one enjoys reading. The hero and heroine
aro really delightful, the latter especially a sweet creature, who will make us look hereafter at all barges with an interest and a hope that wo have never felt before. Then there is the fine, manly, old father, and
the kind, loquacious aunt, not without shrewdness and oven a sense of cul- ture. Perhaps it would be rash to become the son-In-law of P. bargeman on the chance of finding such another pair as Susan's father and his sister.
Then there are other people who are nicely sketched, and who often talk pleasantly and well ; but sometimes, to tell the truth, prose a little. There is one Tapps, a fat baker, who is a sad offender in this way. We could have spared, say, a hundred pages, about Mr. Tapps. On the whole, Mr. Lowth's book has been a pleasant companion, and we recommend it without hesitation to our readers.
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