Giant Despair. By Morley Farrow. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)---A lively, readable,
but faulty novel, which partly makes us regret that the writer has sacrificed truth and nature to a rigid design, and partly makes us -suspect that he has overlooked an important element in the design, as it must have been sketched out. We allude here to the marriage of Paul Renford with Mary Key], a marriage contracted by him although he knows that he has driven Mary's sister to drown herself. This -marriage was essential to the story, but, as it stands, every one must feel -it to be a blot on the whole work. Paul Renford is no hardened villain, yet in this respect his actions are those of one wholly void of moral responsibility. There is a cheerful sense of freedom from the usual estraint of the world throughout the three volumes of Giant Despair, but that is not enough to excuse Paul Renford's conduct. The character of Hippolyte Dell is mere consistent with itself, if not in itself very -natural. In the women Mr. Morley Farrow has aimed at less excep- tional attributes, and has succeeded better. So long as he does not go out of his way to be striking, be is an agreeable writer, and his novel is pleasant enough while it keeps to a more or less beaten track of incident and feeling.
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