Sister Martha ; or, a Romance of the Franco-Prussian War.
By Benjamin Wilson. (Newby.)—What we have to say about this book refers to the first sixty pages only; more we have not been able to read. Here is what Sister Martha's face said, "too plainly and too sadly :"— "I am not what I was. I am not my former self. I am the wreck of something that it was pleasant to look upon—a wreck that, physically and materially, can never be repaired ; that mast drift on through the waves of this troublesome world, unpitied and unknown, unless I am rescued from my former self, and the miseries growing out of the past, —unless I am saved by a holier and stronger power than my own." That is a tolerably complex remark for a face to make. Lord Burleigh's nod was nothing to it. So much for the sentiment. Now for a specimen of the incident. A certain Captain Thornton, an officer in the German Army, casually helps a French peasant woman by taking down tho corpse of her son off a gibbet ; and she naturally rewards him by giving him a packet of letters about his family affairs. From these and not a few other indications we judged that the book was a remarkably absurd one ; but if any one thinks that our judgment was hasty, he can read the other two hundred and seventy odd pages.
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