Eliot the Younger ; a Fiction in Freehand. By Bernard
Barker. (Samuel Tinsley.)—This novel at least merits the praise of being lively and entertaining. It is smartly and sometimes wittily written. The father of "Eliot the Younger "is a figure drawn not without considerable skill, and talks in a way which we do not the lees enjoy because it reminds us very strongly of Miss Austin. The intellectual man, placed in the midst of rural society and married to the most liberal-minded of women, and finding a certain satisfaction in a quiet sarcasm which no one about him understands, is a person whom we are glad to have met. Nor is the book without a higher aim. If a lad ever learns from a book, he might learn by contrasting the rational and ennobling love of the hero for Margaret Ogilvie with his foolish passion for Miss Brooke and Phoebe Langbam. We could have spared some of the details which the writer pleased to give us about Phcebo's London career. Apart from this, we have no fault to find with our author, who performs something, and promises more hereafter.
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