NOVELS.—Val Strange, by David Christie Murray (Chatto and Windus), presents
many of the characteristics which have gained for the author of " Joseph's Coat " a considerable place among present-day novelists. There are in it strong situations, well put there is genuine insight into character ; and there are bits of landscape- painting that recall the peculiar power of Mr. Bret Harte. The effect of the whole, however, is by no means so satisfactory as that of some of Mr. Murray's previous efforts. The " action " of the plot is too spasmodic. Carling, the villain of the piece, who figures as a heartless husband and an ungrateful servant, is a caricature ; there is no adequate motive for his crimes, and the conflict for mastery between him and his employer is protracted to an almost in- tolerable extent. The sad tragedy which first separates and then reunites Val Strange and his friend, Gerard Lumby, might, in our opinion, have been spared ; and the wild revenge which the latter plans, and attempts to carry out, of running down the yacht which contains the man who has blighted his hopes, suggests the idea that Mr. Murray has been studying well, rather than wisely, the works of Mr. Charles Reado, to whom ho dedicates his new book. But Mr. Murray is all himself in telling the adventures in love and fortune- hunting of Hiram Search, a humorous and shrewd American, whose heart and whose worldly philosophy are very nearly as good as Sam Weller's. The more Searches and the fewer Callings Mr. Murray can give n8, the better.--A Fearless Life, by Charles Quentin (Bentley and Son), is an unpleasant and, we must add, an unwholesome story of cross-purposes and unbridled instincts. We are asked by the author to admire Nora Severna, whose life should surely be described as wasted rather than "fearless," and who, cherishing a hopeless passion for one man, deliberately bffers to become the mistress of another. This other—who, by the way, is seldom sober—while he loves More with the "better part of his nature," is found in almost every second page caressing, with Ouidaesque warmth, her supposed half-sister. Catherine Severna, again—it is perhaps not to be wondered at, that ultimately she peeves to have no right to the name—gives private meetings and dinners to another man, who in turn— Bat why tell more of this unpleasant tale ? Yet there are many passages in A Fearless Life which show that Mr. Quentin could write a really good novel, if he gave himself time to ripen, and let "passions" and crudities of ethical creed go to the wall.—The Merchant Prince, by John Berwick Harwood (Hurst and Blackett), is one of those vigorous melodramatic stories of plot and counter. plot, vice punished and virtue rewarded, which its author seems posi- tively to ravel in producing. The tone is always healthy, even though the style is Corinthian, and the book abounds in such descriptions as "the raw, early spring, when Nature seems not as yet to have deter- mined whether to push on the coy vegetation of the hardy plants
that herald the jocund year, or go back to the cold death of winter.' Bertram Oakley, the hero, although rather too much of a saint and a genius rolled into one, takes the reader's fancy from the Bret, and one cannot help following his progress from poverty to fortune, and union with the somewhat shadowy Rose Denham. There is life, too, in the polished scoundrel Walter Denham, although both his polish and his villainy are common-place enough.--Bell and the Doctor, by Thomas Shairp (P. V. White and Co.), is really a masterpice of plot. construction. We have actually three volumes devoted to the develop. ment of a poisoning case, and the accomplishment of a vendetta as ruthless and subtle as anything of the kind that Corsican or Hindoo annals can show. Mr. Shairp, moreover, takes his readers completely by surprise. They will find themselves tolerably far on in the novel before they suspect the choleric, butler, whose acquaintance they make in the first chapter, of being what he is,—a perfect Borgia. The plot in Bell and the Doctor, however, is everything; the charac- ters, except, perhaps, a fussy doctor, who, by the way, is not the Doctor, are nothing. Jasper Iddles, whose sins find him out in so. terrible a way, is a positive libel upon the clerical profession ; and even so accommodating a girl as Belinda, Conway could hardly have been blind to the intense and shameleiss selfishness of his nature.— Benvenata. By Emma Marshall. (Seeley and Co.)—This story is one of the quiet domestic kind, the saddest of the heroine's trials arising from the advent of a step-mother,---if we except a bereave- ment which is a great relief to the minds of readers. The interest can hardly be said to centre in Benvenuta, though, as the heroine, she is rewarded with earthly happiness ; for the figure of her artist cousin is so attractive, that one seems to look for her appearanoea more eagerly. Her brother is, perhaps, almost too perfect ; but the half-invalid Cecil, on whom Benvenuta lavishes much sisterly affeo- tion, is very well drawn ; and her young sister, Nancy, is a charming little figure. It is to be hoped no young literary aspirants will suffer by supposing Benvenuta's success likely to be theirs, or that every young man who writes sonnets gots them inserted in a magazine as easily as Cecil does.
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