A Good Fight in the Battle of Life. (Low, Son,
and Co.) Mary Seaham. By Mrs. Grey. (Chapman and Hall.) The Country Gentleman. By Scrutator." (Chapman and Hall.)—We believe that all these novels —certainly the first two—have attained to a reprint, and consequently have met with a fair amount of success. This cannot be attributed to any delicacy in the discrimination of character, or to any great proba- bility in the incidents. But they possess just the sort of merits which make a drama popular at a transpontine theatre—plenty of bustle and a constant appeal to generous and manly, if somewhat clap-trap, sentiments. Fraud and forgery are as plentiful in them as in a police report, but then, on the other hand, there is abundance of disinterestedness, and. moral purpose, and forgiveness, to which crime serves as a foil All these novels may safely be recommendedto readers whom excessive "culture" has not made fastidious. But what does "Scrutator " mean by his constant denunciations of our " one-sided " laws, by which "country gentlemen are robbed and plundered of their old family estates," while "the money-made man, with his ill-gotten pelf, stalks through the halls of many an old ancestral home ?"
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