Christopher Dudley. By Mary Bridgman. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)—This is a
pleasant, gossipy novel, about nothing in particular, without any pretence at a plot or subtle study of character, but certainly clever and readable. The hero is an amusing person, in whose talk we are cer- tainly more interested than we are in his fortunes. Miss Bridgman indeed thinks it necessary, considering that he is her hero, to connect some slight amount of incident with him. In fact, he comes into a fortune. We knew, of course, that it was to be so, as soon as we found that he was the poor cadet of a good family, with a cousin and his two sons between him and the estates. The two sons are dt owned, accord- ing to the usual rule of Providence in such cases ; the cousin dies in the course of things. We think this a pity ; the incident is too absurdly threadbare by this time, and Christopher was just the light-hearted fellow who would get on admirably well without a fortune. And when he marries an heiress—who proposes to him, by the way, very prettily— we feel still more discontented. We are probably not giving our readers the least idea of what sort of a book this Christopher Dudley is. Well, we may say that it is a sort of worldly "Daisy Chain.' There is a young doctor with a widowed mother and family of brothers and sisters dependent on him, and there are two young friends of the family, our hero and his sister Dosia, with whom the doctor is in love. The lives and fortunes of these people are told in a narrative, rather flippant, perhaps, in tone, but certainly bright and lively, and contriving to keep up a very fair amount of interest, without any crimes or sensational incidents.
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