The Gowers of Glenarne. 3 vols. By David Rice. (Saunders
and Ot'ey.)—Isolated scenes and passages in this novel are fairly good. Tho flood among the Welsh mountains, for instance, is well described, and Mr. Rico shows some little humour in ridiculing his countrymen's weak- ness for pedigrees of prodigious antiquity. But the tale, as a whole, drags along very heavily, and when the writer has to bring about the denouement, such as it is, he fairly loses his head. The whole story of the alienation between Sir Hugh and his wife is as absurd as anything that could be imagined. And why the wife, who has been living, of course in disguise, within two or three miles of the place where she was born and brought up, does not declare herself sooner we cannot think. Another objection that we have to make is of a more serious kind. Mr. Rice has thought fit to entangle one of his heroes, most unneces- sarily, as far the tale is concerned, in an engagement to a money-lender's daughter. He marries her to keep his word, but bargains that they should live apart. When he is ordered to India her father forces her upon him. And at last, when it becomes necessary for him to marry one of *the heroines, the reader is supposed to hear with satisfaction that she elopes with another officer. The writer seems wholly unconscious that the husband's conduct had been thoroughly immoral and die- honourable.
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