The Lawyer's Daughter. 3 vols. By Frank Trollope. (Skeet.)— The
reader knows pretty well what he may expect to find when the scene of a novel is laid in Venice, in the seventeenth century. Unscrupu- lous nobles, adventurers of every degree of villainy, outlaws, bravoes, and, the like, throng the stage, while he' gathers occasional glimpses of more stately personages, members of the mysterious Council of Ten, and the great Doge himself. Mr. Trollope does not attempt much in
the way of drawing character. He leads us, indeed, by something he says early in the tale, to expect the working-out of a moraL The hero begins by vowing vengeance against the murderer of his mother, and we
are told what a rash and sinful thing he did, and how much he will suffer for it. But though he executes the vengeance in a very complete and
satisfactory manner—and it must be allowed that the Duke of Mala- mocco amply deserved all that he got—it does not appear that the punishment followed. He gets many hard knocks and gives many
more, and goes through all the adventures which the hero of such a novel may naturally expect. But he always falls uppermost, gets very well out of every scrape, marries the young lady of his love, and in
fact, suffers no permanent loss but banishment from Venice,—and
Venice, if we may judge from this sample of its life, does not seem to have been a very agreeable place of residence. The story moves very briskly, virtue is triumphant, and crime is crushed; every one comes by his own, and the specially deserving are found to be counts and countesses, and the like. In fact, The Lawyer's Daughter is a read- able story, which will not disappoint the reader, if he does not look for what it does not profess to give.
Previous page
