As a Roaring Lion By Richard Penderel. (Skeffington and Son.)—From
the character of this story, it is not quite clear why its author should have given it the title of a "romance." It is rather a medley in which love and roguery, the plotting of virtue and counter-plotting of vice, burglary, murder, and arson, are all mixed up as in a Scotch haggis of the approved type. There is in it plenty of that life which means energy. The scoundrels, especially the " superior fiend" Morton, who, it may be presumed, is the roaring lion, and Peter H. Mamby, who gets caught in the trap he sets for another, are admirably sketched. The heroes of the story, the almost too good Dr. Bertram Nutter, and that model among sailors ashore, Allenby, strike one as rather poor, how- ever, beside the villains, though that is perhaps excusable under the circumstances. Mr. Penderel, moreover, decidedly taxes his readers' powers of belief when he asks them to regard it as pos- sible that Morton should bring about a marriage between Clarke Langford and such a creature as James Cranstone, whose final union with such a decided seaport beauty as Polly Cannaway is the worst—and the best—that could befall him. With the exception of Polly, the girls who figure in As a Roaring Lion are distinctly conventional. But the book is so full of vigour of all sorts that it is certain to have many readers who will appreciate its bustle of incident and its wealth of mystery. It may be allowed, too, that Mr. Penderel's power for hitting off character easily and rapidly is increasing with his experience in writing.
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