A Brilliant Woman, By the Hon. Mrs. Henry Chetwynd, 3
vols. (Hutchinson and Co.)—We do not often get such good, careful work in novels as Mrs. Chetwynd has put forth in A Brilliant Woman. From the first to the last page it is well
written, and worth reading, and abounds in little descriptive touches of landscapes, houses, and people, that bring country-life and country-people before us with unusual distinctness. The hero and heroine are led by a third person to believe themselves more in love than they really are, they marry, but do not understand each other—indeed, neither do we, nor, we believe, Mrs. Chetwynd- there are troubles, but, finally, just as they realise that they love each other, matters right themselves. Both Cyril and Maria Burlington are drawn with such care that they become very real to the reader ; and this, despite a certain obscurity about them ; and the gradual attraction which both experience when relations become strained, is very subtly rendered. The background of
county society is, to us, almost the best part of A Brilliant Woman,
so true and characteristic is it, and all the more effective from being quiet in tone, though not without a relish of humorous situations. So correct is the atmosphere of society and good breeding, that Maria's mistakes, though they do but result from the want of warnings, appear exaggerated; indeed, some of them
are too far-fetched. As a specimen of the vulgar fin. de sickle genus, Flora Harrington is a capital sketch. A Brilliant Woman, with its quiet, reflective, and occasionally incisive style, reminds
us of the work of a famous contemporary novelist, and has also the similarity that, while it reveals great knowledge of life, it breathes a most delightful refinement, being a novel that any one might read with advantage and pleasure.
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