Potty. By Katharine S. Macquoid. 2 vols. (Macmillan.)—We found in
reading this novel, as we have often found in reading novels before, that our pleasure did not increase as we went en. The cottage by the Devonshire wood, with the two pretty figures, the beautiful Patty and the graceful young artist, made a picture that was pretty to look at when painted by so very skilful a hand as Miss lifacquoid's. As we went on we bourne involved in a number of things that were not by any means pretty. Patty we found to be a very heart- less and selfish creature, and the artist not to be much better. Perhaps this was inevitable, and nothing more than truth. The outside of woods and cottages often has a beauty which vanishes when you get to know about the people who are living in them. But it is a fault we think in Patty that all the characters in it, all the interests which it involves, are small. And so when we get from the scenery, and from the outside life, both of which things Miss llacquoid describes admirably well, the reader does experience a chill. It is impossible to care very mach about the human beings in the story. The best of them, Nuns, is married to a man so obviously unworthy of her that One loses all patience, and can hardly feel any kind of pleasure at the event which rewards her devotion. Still the book stands considerably above the level of the average novel. The literary skill which the writer displays throughout is of no com- mon kind, and there are fine things in the narrative ; the scene wherein Mr. Downes finds himself confronted by the sins of his youth is espe- cially so, full of real dramatic force.
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