Krishna Kanta's Will. By Baukim Chandra Chatterjee. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—This
is a curious story of life in Bengal as it is in a wealthy house. There is a certain simplicity about it which a Weatern reader notices at once. Nothing could be more artless than the way in which Hara LE sets about forging a will ; nothing more childish than the method by which the injured wife of Gobina LE shows her displeasure. Altogether, we have a very real-looking picture of a domestic interior; but when we are told by Mr. Blumhardt, who has added some useful notes and a glossary, that Bankim Chatterjee was the "greatest novelist that India ever produced," we are inclined to exclaim, "God save the mark ! "—The Lovely Malincourt. By Helen Mather. (Jarrold and Sons.)—What is likely to happen when a father, anxious to cure the folly of a daughter who is refusing a moat eligible suitor, sends her to London that she may meet with a little wholesome neglect? As the said daughter is the greatest beauty of the day, she extends her conquests more widely than ever, and becomes more unmanageable. These are the things in the tale that strike us as improbable, but it is readable, and not =pleasing. This is more than we can say of three tales which we may dismiss with the emphatic expression of our opinion that in various degrees they offend propriety, literary and other The Woman Who Didn't, by Victoria Cross (J. Lane); A Hasty Marriage, by Sir Randall Roberts, Bart. (Routledge and Sons) ; and The Woman Who Wouldn't, by Lucas Cleave (Simplcin, Marshall, and Co.) It is hardly necessary, perhaps, to give the order of demerit, but the climax of offence is reached in the third.—A Woman in It, by "Rita" (Hutchinson and Co.), might be classed, at first sight, with the three just mentioned. But while we must decline to recommend it to our readers, we can acknowledge that the author has distinct literary ability and a good purpose to serve. No one, certainly, will feel any desire to imitate the career of the adventuress whom she describes. And though her Noel Grey seems as little likely as any human being to give help to the "friendless, desperate, forsaken" of her sex, it was at least a laudable ambition.
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