The House of Rochfort. By William Platt. 3 vole. (Saunders
and Otley.)—A good deal of labour seems to have been expended on this novel, bat it has not had the effect of lightening the reader's task. Mr. Platt has what is called among cooks a heavy hand. He pounds up the traits which compose a character with a pestle, and works away at them till the whole mass seems to him sufficiently smooth and consistent. He rolls his dough over and over, bearing upon it with infinite energy, and thinks the paste in which he then prepares to enclose the characters must have been worked into lightness. But there has been some mistake in the proportion, or certain improper ingredients have been added, or Mr. Platt himself was not born to be a cook. The result is a laboured and laborious production which can hardly be read for pleasure, and has no claims to be read as a duty. There are parts which might give us hope for Mr. Platt's success if he could get over his constitutional faults, and in this respect the House of Roclifort is a great improvement on the author's last noveL But we have arrived at this conclusion by a pro- cess which we cannot recommend to others, as we are sure few others will follow our example. We read the novel carefully. What it would have seemed if we had merely skimmed it we cannot say. Probably we should have known nothing whatever about it.
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