Below the Salt : a Novel. By Lady Wood. (Chapman
and Hall.)—Lady Wood sometimes runs into extravagance in her plots, and allows her style to drift into carelessness ; but her stories always interest us, and we never fail to find in them the sterling qualities of good-seneeand kindly, genuine sympathies. There are hard truths and strong expressions in her books, and she does not trouble herself about small details of construction, or attend closely to consistency of local colour ; she is not in many respects a true artist, nevertheless there is more to be pleased with and to praise in her novels than in those of many writers who are far loss faulty, but have not so much power of winning liking and interest as Lady Wood has. Below the Salt is one of her most pleasing stories, and it is freer from faults of construction than most of its predecessors. We were afraid at first that Lady Wood was going to perpetrate an "Enoch Arden" story, but if she were as- sailed by the temptation to do so. she vanquished it triumphantly, and all her readers will thank her for the simpler and certainly not un- pathetic ending of the boy-and-girl marriage between the gallant young gentleman who meets Pleasance while waiting for his ship to sail, and the beautiful girl whose place is "below the salt." The story is a reasonable mingling of the gladness and the melancholy of human life, and it abounds in shrewd touches of observation and sketches of
character. We especially admire the lady who is so profoundly shocked at the idea of theft, "having always had all she wanted without stealing."
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