NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*
OP the many writers who have borrowed or adapted what may be called the Dickens formula, none have been more uniformly successful than Mr. Pett Ridge. In the delineation of the humours of modern Cockney life he is without a peer, and while by no means oblivious of the squalor of the slums, he is as invincible an optimist as his great forerunner. His new novel, A Breaker of Laws, is as good as, or even better than, Mora _Emig, that admirable picture of the regeneration of the female "Hooligan," or its companion, A Son of the State, which describes the gradual conversion of a gutter- snipe into a good citizen. The volume before us traces with equal, or even greater, skill the tragi-cornic career of a gamin, for whom the combined influences of heredity and environment prove too strong, though in the end he expiates the wrong done to his wife and child by an act of really heroic self-effacement. "Elf" Bateson,. the central figure of the story, is a most engaging rascal,—good-natured, indomitably sanguine, quick-witted. and. a.-genuine humourist. }ti s affec- tion for his wife, a delightful little Devonshire housemaid, is the redeeming feature of his character, and the splendid loyalty of his comrade, the stolid, taciturn Finnis, is, in view of Bateson's attractiveness and bonhomie, quite in accordance with the facts of everyday life. Mr. Pett Ridge alao gives us a series of striking .portraits in *other Fayres, the old " fence " ; • (1.) A Breaker of Laws. By W. Pett Ridge. London : Harper and Brothers. [66.)—(f.). The Isle of Unrest. By Henry Setcnr- Merriman. London : Sinith, Elder,and Co. [6a.]—(3.) The Flower of the Flock. By W. E. Norris. London : J. Nisbet and Co. [ts.]—(4.) The Raif-Hearted. By John Buchan. London : Isbister and Co. [Ca.]---(5.) The Dishonour of Prank Scott. By H. Hamilton. London : Hurst and Blacken- Ips.1---,(6.) The Love that Lasts. Br Florence Warden. London : Ward, Lock, and Co.- [30. FM Lad: of Loge. By Lillas Campbell Davidson. London Horace 3farshali and Son. [3s. 6d.)--(e) The Living Remnant, and other Quaker Talcs. By K. S. K. Londoii : Headley Brothers. [3s cd.) Mr. Ladd, her chief customer, a thief and histrion in one; and his strange sister, who cherishes an unrequited affection for Bateson. In the matter of incident the story is packed full of excitement without ever degenerating into melodrama. Mr. Pett Ridge's style is not devoid of mannerism ; in his short staccato sentences he carries the cult of brevity and incisive- ness to excess. But it would be ungrateful to lay stress on so venial a fault in a book that contains so much wit and tenderness as A Breaker of Laws.
Mr. Merriman has at least three strong claims on the grati- tude of the novel-reading public. He is a good workman, he eschews verbosity, and he does not dilute his talent by over-production. The announcement of a new novel from his pen consequently gives rise to agreeable expectations, which -are not belied by a perusal of The Isle of Unrest, a romance of modern Corsica at the time of the Franco-Prus- sian War. The plot, which has its mainspring in a family vendetta between the houses of Perucca and de Vaaselot, is both complicated and ingenious. The adjoining estates are apparently worthless, but Colonel Gilbert, a French engineer officer employed on the railway works, has discovered traces of gold in the soil, and with great patience and skill exploits the ancestral feud to gain his ends,—that of buying out the owners. He succeeds in hastening the death of the Perucca, hoping to induce his heiress to buy, but finds her obstinate, and what is worse, falls in love with her. Denise, on the other hand, is in love with Count Lory de Vasselot, a gallant young soldier, but is misled by Colonel Gilbert into attaching a discreditable significance to the mystery surrounding his establishment. As a matter of fact he is harbouring no mistress, but his father, who for thirty years has lain perdu after shooting one of the Peruccas. Then come the war, in regard to which Lory's attitude is summed up in Lovelace's lines to Lucasta (which Mr. Merriman prints by way of overture to the book) ; his journey to Corsica—when half recovered of his wound—to search for his father, who has disappeared from the Chateau ; his dis- covery of the title-deeds which enable him to frustrate his rival's designs ; and his return to the war to fight alongside of and under the very man whose schemes he bad upset, but who redeems his reputation by a gallant death. The Corsican setting of the story is excellent, both as regards the landscape and the part played by the natives, notably the Abbe Susini, a typical Corsican, who from time to time disappears into- the macguis with the outlaws. Altogether, this is a book which shows careful observation as well as historical study— Mr. Merriman makes excellent use of the attachment of the Corsicans to the house of Bonaparte—and is marked by a sympathetic appreciation of the excellences of the French character which has not been invariably displayed by recent writers in the English Press. Personally, we think Mr. Merri- man's attitude towards the Second Empire and its head far too considerate, but are content to overlook the unsoundness of his politics in the excellence of his romance. The book is undoubtedly a trifle sombre, but that is inevitable in a story overshailowed by the disaster of 1870-71, and dealing largely with the blood-feuds of a "sullen and turbulent race."
If The Flower of the Flock were Mr. Norris's first book, it would be possible to speak of it in terms of considerable approval. But unfortunately we are all too familiar with Mr. Norris's manner to be particularly exhilarated by a new specimen thereof. Mr. Norris, of course, like other novelists, chooses for each of his works a new plot and a new set of characters, but unfortunately plus c'est diprent, plus c'est la seems chose. He invariably presents us to a crowd of amiable, polished ladies and gentlemen, whose characters are generally distinguished by a fluently superficial cynicism, and whose emotions, though sometimes labelled with the big word "love," are far too urbane and well-regulated ever to descend below the level of a well-bred regard. In Mr. Norris's pages the marriages are all arranged," to use the elegant phrase of the society paragraphists. But as a set-ofF- it must be admitted that Mr. Norris writes excellent English, and is happily free from any of the literary affectations of the day.
Mr. Buchan has given us in The Half-Hearted a spirited study of an Admirable Crichton of our own day, who, after a coruscating display of ineffectual versatility, redeemed a shattered -career by sacrificing his life in a frontier fight against countless odds. The book is excellently written, and
the chapters describing the delights of the "land of the mountain and the flood," and the heroine's first visit to a charming country house in the Highlands, are capital reading. But we fear that Mr. Buchan's readers, or a considerable por- tion of them, will never forgive him for marrying the heroine to so repulsive a specimen of the professional politician as Mr. Stocks. It was quite right that Lewis Haystoun, the " half- hearted " hero, should be punished for his instability by the loss of his lady-love, but there was surely no need to sentence her to a lifelong partnership with a pompous and unctuous vulgarian.
Before Mr. Hamilton embarks in another novel of is hig-W we recommend a cottrse of study in Debrett's Peerage. He will there learn that although the daughters of Earls are known as "Lady," the " style " of the younger son of an Earl is simply "the Honourable." Wherefore in The Dis- honour of Frank Scott neither of the two wives of that in- discreet bigamist would ever have been "Lady Francis Scott." It would surely have been quite as easy to make the father of Frank a Marquis. Let us, however, admit that, apart from the feeling of acute discomfort caused by the unpleasant nature of the story, the book is eminently readable. Still, the common-sense reader will find it difficult to believe that even so easy-going a creature as Frank Scott would have drifted into marrying two women practically at the same time, even though he did imagine the second one to be within a few weeks of death. The pictures of life in Anglo-India are well drawn, and the book—always excepting the painful motive—very bright and amusing.
In her new story, The Love that Lasts, Miss Florence Warden is " verra Scotch." The hero marries the heroine, mostly for her money, but omits the precaution of being off with the old love before the ceremony. Accordingly the said old love continues to occupy, in shameless luxury, a wing of his Scotch house, whence she issues disguised as a boy and, very naturally, makes no end of mischief. There is generally a subtle flavour of the Christmas annual about Miss Warden, but, judged by the standard of mere " sensation," her work is readable.
The heroine of For Lack of Love does not find it quite as easy as the hero of Pinafore to maintain her story of having been changed at nurse and being the rightful owner of the property. Unfortunately, too, her mother, long since disposed of in Australia, meets her in a casual visit to Westminster Abbey, and, as a schoolboy would put it, gives the whole show away completely. This is a harmless little story, though the good heroine is unnatural in her perfection.
Though slight in texture and unpretending in scope, the Quaker tales collected under the title of The Living Remnant are instinct with the gracious and gentle serenity charac- teristic of the Society of Friends,—the amcena piorum concilia, to borrow the Virgilian phrase. The scene is laid in a country town half a century back, and the characters in their strength and weakness are the counterparts of those who in real life excited the sympathy and the banter of Charles Lamb.
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