Adrienne Hope. By Matilda M. Hays. 2 vole. (Newby.)—A. better
novel than this would have been spoilt by the singularly infelicitous arrangement of the plot. We have an account in the first fifty pages of the marriage and honeymoon of Lord Charles Luttrell; we are then taken back some five-and-twenty years in order to be present at the birth of a golden-haired girl, who is afterwards introduced to the said Lord Charles, and whose fate of coarse we know as well as we do that of the rabbit that is put into the boa constrictor's cage. This is most distressing to a well constituted mind, that has no pleasure in contem- plating the aristocratic dragon engaged upon his horrible meal ; and we cannot say that the depression of mind thus occasioned is at all alleviated by the very honest but very tedious love-making of the other personages in the story. Our authoress, however, did not write the novel for the sake of telling a story ; she merely wished to air her views about woman's rights, spiritualism, Ristori, Gibson, dm., which she puts into the month of a certain Miss Reay, at whose feet all the personages of the book sit from time to time, and imbibe much useless knowledge.
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