Hilda and L By Mrs. Hartley. 2 vols. (Samuel Tinsley.)—This
is a not very amusing game of cross-purposes in love. "I" falls in love with the vicar of the parish ; the vicar with Hilda, "I's" ward; Hilda herself with a very ineligible person, Captain Percy Nugent. Naturally this brings about much trouble ; Captain Nugent is tried for bigamy, but, thanks to novelists' law, escapes because the clergyman who performed the first marriage is dead, and the witnesses are not forthcoming ; Hilda dies of a broken heart ; the vicar disappears ; in fact, "I" is the only person who makes a good thing out of it ; her wo leave with a fair prospect of becoming a duchess. The story, it will be seen, is not a very attractive one, and it is not materially assisted by the manner in which it is told. Mrs. Hartley, indeed, must have the credit of doing her best to enliven it. When the story seems to flag, she kills an old servant of the family by a stroke of lightning, and elsewhere she devotes a chapter to describing the wedding of a young lady who has no sort of connection with the story. Unfortunately there are readers ungrateful enough to resent these unnecessary additions and digressions.
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