Point Blank : a Korel. By the Author of "Jack
ITrquhart's Daughter." (Bentley.)—The meaning of the title of this novel is obscure ; but if, as we suppose, it indicates the unadorned downrightness with which very ugly facts are put, and some re. markably despicable characters are depicted, it is well applied. There is a certain coarse cleverness about the story; it reveals con- siderable knowledge of a kind of life that is better unknown, and insight into motives that had better be allowed to remain hidden in the mean breasts which harbour them. Pathetic and simple pictures of the shabby-genteel poverty that is so truly pitiable, have often been drawn ; and even in this money-worshipping time, when novelists crowd their pages with gorgeous gaud% and make their people offensive by a Pagan splendour of living, a true picture of that poverty would find its way to the reader's sympathies. But we turn with disgust, and, let us add, incredulity, from such a family group as that of Mrs. Wynter and her daughters. We really can- not believe that there ever existed a lady by birth and education who would ask gentlemen visiting at her house to give herself and her girls a dinner at a restaurant, and to get their (the visitors') sisters' cast-off garments for them. We can only say, if such things do happen, they are better unrecorded. It is difficult to imagine what class of minds the writer can have supposed so degraded a type of woman- hood was likely to amuse. She scatters French phrases freely over her pages; but few of them are correct either in grammar or spelling, or are correctly applied. For instance, she uses hors ligne in the sense of "outrageous," and applies it as censure ; thus reversing its actual significance.
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