Kimberwell House. By Robert Hudson. 3 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)
—If you could take out of this novel what the author evidently means to be as important to it as the character of Hamlet is to the play, there would be no great need of finding fault with it. We find a story read- able and interesting enough, with at least one striking scene in it,—tho characters look like real people, and the conversations are fairly natural and easy. But then it is necessary to have a plot ; the reader must be harrowed with fear for the future of his hero. And hero the author takes leave of good sense. There is a grand trial, the hero is accused of a crime which he is as likely to have committed as he is to have assassin- ated the Emperor of China. Of course even the simplest novel-reader knows that it will be all right, and so will look upon the elaborate machinery by which the discovery of the hero's innocence and the real culprit's guilt is made as a wearisome superfluity. On the whole, we should say that Mr. Hudson has some of the qualities requisite for writ- ing a tolerable novel, but that the art of constructing a good plot is not among them.
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