A Horrid Girl. By the Anther of "Margaret's Engagement." 3
vols. (Bentley and Son.)—There is a certain novelty about the idea of this tale. An old lady reads or allows to be read, for the amusement of certain young friends, a packet of old letters which tells the story of her youth. She had, it seems, been neglected, and had contracted, infandum diem, a habit of swearing. The swearing, however, seems to have been of an innocuous character, and though certainly unladylike, such as would not have incurred from the severest magistrate the penalty of five shillings. So much the reader may learn when we tell him that much of the plot of the story is to be found in the efforts of the heroine to conceal from the hero the horrible fact that she had once greeted him with the exclamation, "Confound you I" the circumstances being that she was going superbly dressed to a ball, and that he himself, being bound for the same place, but having been shipwrecked on the way, had been bidden by the driver of the fly to get in, and had been precipitated all dripping wet into her arms. The offence was not unpardonable, and the reader is glad to find that it is not allowed to be an insuperable barrier between two loving hearts, and that the title of "horrid girl "really belongs, not to this outspoken damsel, but to a ischeming young woman who is much more restrained in her manner, but has very little else that is praiseworthy about her. The subject is not one out of which very much can be made, nor is the author's style all that could be wished, but the work is readable.
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