Red Rose and Tiger-Lily. By Mrs. L. T. Meade. (Cassell
and Co.)—This story is a continuation, so far at least as it intro- duces again certain characters with whom Mrs. Meade made us acquainted a short while since in "A World of Girls." We are concerned here with the fortunes of two families,—Sir john Thornton and his daughters Hester and Nan, both inhabitants of the "World," and their neighbour, Squire Lorimer of The 'Towers,' with his tribe of sons and daughters. Another important personage is Annie Forest, also an old acquaintance. But the active interest of the tale is chiefly developed by a certain very eccentric young woman, Antonia Bernard Temple. It must be owned that her proceedings somewhat resemble the action of a comedy, we might even say of a farce. But they are highly enter- taining. She commands our sympathy, and we follow her doings with an unfailing interest and without any disposition to make too nice an inquiry into probabilities. Red Rose and Tiger-Lity is as brisk and pleasant a tale as Mrs. Meade has ever written, though its merit, viewed as a specimen of the novelist's art, is scarcely of the first class.
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