Caleb Booth's Cie I. By Mrs. G. Linnains Banks. 3
vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—This novel is not as good as "The Manchester Man," but that indeed was hardly to be expected. In that tale Mrs. Banks had a rare stock of originals to draw her portraits from. She drew from life, and being able to do what does not by any means follow as a matter of course, make her portraits lifelike, she contrived to make a very admirable and effective picture. That here, too, she draws from life, up to a certain degree, we do not doubt. But it is also clear to us that she draws much more than she has done before from the imagina- tion. The " clerk " is a somewhat conventional villain. We seem to have met him before, and know pretty well what he is going to do. The same may be said of his sister. Then the plot is out short in a very inartistic way. We had expected, for instance, some development of the story arising out of the suspicious, or, rather, more than suspicions, death of Mrs. Booth, in the fiz'st volume ; but it is not so, the crime remaining undetected.
dens ex machind in the shape of a police officer, from Australia, appears on the scene, and carries off the actors into the invisible. The fall of a burning factory disposes in an equally peremptory manner of other objectionable people, and merit in the persons of the survivors is allowed to flourish unmolested. It must not be understood, however, that we would speak disrespectfully of the book ; it is written with power, and is a capital story, one which we found it difficult to lay down, an uncommon experience, alas I to a critics. Altogether, we can recommend it.
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