Cosette. By Katharine S. Macquoid. 2 vols. (Ward and Downey.)—A
novelist has more resources than one might on first thoughts imagine in dealing with the subject of French courtship. This time Mrs. Macquoid enlists our sympathies on behalf of the lover who makes his advances in regular form,—addresses, that is, the guardian of the girl whom he loves. He is elderly, he follows the unromantic occupation of a chef de cuisine. But we soon get to prefer him, and at the last Cosette herself is induced to prefer him, to the handsome young fellow who has such a fine eye for beauty in Nature as well as in woman, and who therefore prefers to fish a picturesque river to shutting himself up in a factory. All this is very nicely managed. No one would believe that he could come to have so high an esteem for the pompous chef as he probably will have before the story is finished. There is much skill in the way in which Mrs. Macquoid develops the virtues which are hidden under M. Pecasse's formal exterior ; and the pictures of French ways and manners are drawn with all her wonted skill.
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