Heriot's Choice. By Rosa Nouchetto Carey. 3 vols. (Bentley.)— The
reader must not be discouraged by a somewhat unpromising begin- ning to this tale. When he reaches the latter part of the first volume he will find the interest increase, and follow with no little eagerness the fortunes of Miss Carey's dramatis persona,. The resemblance between Heriot's Choice and Miss Yonge's stories is obvious, but there is nothing that can be called imitation. The same kind of life, a well-cultured English home, with moderate means, under strong religious influences of the Anglican kind, is studied and described from the same point of view. Miss Garey has supplied herself with a good stock of heroes and heroines. "Aunt Mildred" is the heroine, but there are subsidiary person- ages, of no little importance, in her niece, an orphan adopted into the family ; and that most fascinating of beings, an "heiress." Of the male kind there is the Doctor, whose " choice " forms the chief interest of the novel; two nephews, and an athletic curate. Each has a love-story; and the pairs, after some entangle- ment, are appropriately sorted, the athletic curate and missionary coming last, but not without a hope of finding a congenial contrast in the poetess, who begins by heartily despising him. All this is told very prettily, sometimes with true force and pathos, as in the scene where Heriot finds out where his real love is set. We cannot quite approve of this gentleman, but if Miss Carey thinks him worthy of her heroine, who shall object P If he had lived in Sir Arthur Helps's "Lake-City," he would have found a way out of his difficulties by taking to himself a " beauty-wife " and a" sense-wife" (or whatever these ladies were called). Being an Englishman, he was not a little perplexed.—Sir John. By the Author of "Anne Dysart." 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—Sir John is a very proud and somewhat foolish old baronet, who, not having a son, is very anxious that the title and the estates should go together. This purpose supplies the reasou why his name figures as the title of the story, and furnishes the very slender thread of interest which belongs to it. The family pride of the Lavingtons is a little caricatured, not in its intensity (for the reality is often beyond description), but in its manifestation. Otherwise, the pictures of life are naturally :drawn. The best character, perhaps, is the parson, George Stanmore, with his shallow sentiment. It is only by degrees that we find him out, and can quite understand how Jennie was deceived in him.—Lit tie Miss Primrose. By the Anther of "St. Olave's," &c. (Hurst and Blackett.)—Again the very slenderest thread of story is made to supply, or at least keep together, the material of a novel of the conventional length. A clergyman's daughter loves and is loved by a young gentle- man who has come back from New Zealand, and obtained a good position as a land agent. A designing young woman comes between them, and palms off on the lady a lying tale of how her lover has been long engaged to be married. "Miss Primrose" finally inter- venes as Providence ; the deserving people are married happily, and the intriguer is left in the possession of a doubtful blessing, in the foolish and extravagant baronet whom she entraps into marriage. All this might have beeu told in about a tenth of the space, without sensible loss ; but the writer ha s a skilful pen, makes the very best of her materials, and, like a good cook, does not permit the reader to remember what very little substance there is in the dish which she has provided.—The Home of Faith. By Helen Dickens. 3 vols. (Skeet.) — Miss Lurgan, the governess, the heroine of the story, is very like the heroine of Villette, in the patience and self-restraint with which she does her work, and in the ending of her love-story. We can see little else to say of this story, except that it is written in but indifferent English, the less to be excused, as Miss Dickens mentions on her title-page more than one previous work. "True nobility is not to be snubbed out or obliterated by poverty," and "the lady's pleasantry was the force of habit, not inclination" (" pleasantness" being apparently meant), are elegant extracts, taken from the same page.—The Love of his Life. By Cosmo Cumming. 3 vols. (Moxon, Saunders, and Co)—Mr. Cumming's book seems to be translated from some other language, which, from the scene of the story, we may conjecture to be Celtic. How else are we to account for such a passage as this :— " The vivid darts of flame flew far and near, and the lone valley spoke the wild language of the thickening thunder-claps, whose ominous fury burst the gates of floods, and tore the rain, a drowning deluge, down ?" Is it by a too close adherence to Celtic idiom that we hear of "irate ejected bolts of flame thrust earthwards in the whirling haste of heaven's hurrying merriment ?" When our wonder at these eccentricities was exhausted, we found the book unreadable to the last degree.
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