Noel; or, It Was to Be. By Robert Baker and
Skelton Yorke. 2 vols. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—This novel is a very disappointing one, for the mere writing is good enough to raise hopes in the reader's mind of an amount of excellence which it never attains. The faultlessness of heroes and heroines and the unmitigated depravity of villains has been complained of by critics, until it is not worth while to complain of it any longer. But exaggeration is really the leading characteristic of this book. The minor characters are as much affected by it as the principal. Unfortunately there are sensual clergymen, but Dr. Vansettle is an in- credible conception, and certainly would have been exiled from respect- able society long before his final degradation. The Hammerlye family, again conduct their machinations to procure a husband with an openness which would in real life defeat itself. Even stupid girls would see this, and the Miss Hammerlyes are represented as clever. Of Sir Robert Dalzell we say less because he is the villain, but his excessive cowardice is a trial to which a reader's faith ought not to be exposed. He would have sent a challenge to Noel, if it had been only to save the value of his commission,—no unimportant object to a man in his desperate circum- stances. On the other hand, people who are content with an easily written narrative of events, to the probability of which they never give a thought, will find this novel carry them through the languid hours of a summer afternoon about as well as the ordinary stock in trade of the circulating libraries. And the complication in the case of Major Many- acre is really ingenious in its flimsiness. Fancy a high-minded and just man entering a room and seeing a friend kiss his wife without her offering active resistance, then turning on his heel, and refusing ever to see her or hear a word of explanation from her, when an explanation of five minutes' length would have completely established her innocence. But without such complications how could we over have novels ?
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