Mary Stanley ; or, the Secret Ones. 3 vols. (Chapman
and Hall.)— This story consists of two parts, which are not very cleverly woven together. First, we have the adventures of an English governess in Russia, who, after a narrow escape from wolves (told with considerable spirit), enters the family of "the terrible Count Golovin," head of the secret police of Russia. We do not care much about the heroine; and the languid interest which we might be inclined to feel is checked by her attaching herself to, as it seems to us, decidedly the wrong hero. But then we have also, in the second place, the story of the "Union," a secret society which existed in the later days of Alexander I., and which aimed at the subversion of the despotic rule of the Czars. And this story is told well enough. The great value and interest of the book consists, however, in the pictures of Russian life, manners, and ways of thinking, pictures evidently drawn by one who is well acquainted with the subject, and who displays considerable skill. This skill, indeed, does not go beyond representing the surface of things. The characters are very indistinctly and coarsely sketched indeed. We take the Prince Donskey, for instance, who is represented as an utterly impossible compound of meanness, falsehood, and cowardice. Are wo to believe that a man who not only is all this, but is shown to be so by public exposures which it would take more than oak and triple brass to resist, would still be received in any kind of decent society ? Apart from this fault, the book is very entertaining, over long, perhaps, but not intolerably so, and so far to bo easily corrected by a little judicious skipping.
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