The History of Margaret Morton. By a Contemporary. (Chapman and
Hall.)—A thoroughly middle-class novel, in which there are no lords and ladies, whose scenes lie not in Belgravia, in which fashionable jargon has no place, and nobody seems ever to have heard of Hurling- ham,is rather a pleasant novelty. The joys and sorrows, the adventures and mancenvres of a little coterie, all Misters, Mistresses, and Misses, some of whom actually live in lodgings, and are waited on by the landlady, are topics which it needed a good deal of courage on the part of a novelist to offer for the public delectation. A " cornet " on his way to join his regiment in India, who dines out in full regimentals, and finding himself a great social success under those brilliant circum- stances, brings a selection of " ours " to do the same, is perhaps a less desirable variety in books and life ; but he is not of much importance to the story in reality, although at first it looks as if he were going to marry Margaret Morton. He does not marry her, however, but his father does, and everything is very nice and comfortable. We wish we could say more for the book, which is an honest and spirited departure from the conventional novel, than that it is readable ; but unhappily the execution is not commendable, and the author indulges in eccentricities of language which We cannot sanction. It is un- bearable to be told, in print, that people "posited "themselves, or were "posited," on chairs ; and, because a lady's maid has a habit of saying, "I know I speak out of my turn," to have that phrase repeated twenty- one times in three pages of dialogue.
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