28 APRIL 1866, Page 20

but there is true flavour in the loves of Lady

Cecil and her husband, Laurence O'Boynesville, the gallant Irish lawyer, so brave, and patient, and cool, who calmly wins his wife away from her temptation by a love the tempter cannot at all match. Only is it all Miss Braddon's? We con-

fess with shame we are not sure, for it was we who praised so strongly the Doctor's Wife, only to discover afterwards that whatever is great in that book is derived in idea at least from Flaubert's Madame Bovary. It is not quite fair, that, and till it is explained one has a tendency to doubt Miss Braddon's finest appeals to human nature.