Ada Moore's Story. (Tinsley.)--Rubbish of the Minerva Press kind,
wicked nabobs with dried-up livers, gloomy lovers who have nearly killed previous wives, and ghostly figures which talk demi-blank verse,
and give medicines of mysterious efficacy, " with directions written on the label of each phial." There is an old Begam, and a Sir Sean, and all the rest of the old machinery, mixed up with tedious descriptions of Mentone, and other towns of the Riviera. The hopeful features of: the book, if it is, as we imagine, a first effort, are a sketch of a French, linigr4 very good indeed, and a strict plainness of style whenever the author is not intentionally magniloquent. The writer seems to be always hesitating between her natural style and an artificial one, between a sen- tence like this, " She was very animated, graceful, and witty too,.
was that dear mother. Not satirical—that word supposes something bitter—but with a quick sense of the ludicrous, a fund of genuine humour,
and the power, had she chosen to exert it, of being a capital mimic. She was deeply and unaffectedly religions. Order with her was an instinct, and industry a habit. She managed all money matters ;. kept a day-book, and an account of every farthing received or expended ; and recorded every evening the events (they were such to us) of our happy, peaceful days during my childhood," and a sentence like this, " Barren and hard-featured, compared to that
bride of the sun, fragrant with the orange blossoms that seem to deck her for the altar, sunny and soft Ausonia,—barren and bleak in- deed art thou, Northumbria! save for thy purple moors and thy forests of dark pines ; but yet thou art bathed for me in the rich sunset of memory. And thou, Moordell, nestling in old Coquet Dale, brightened and freshened by the winding river that lends its name to that valley, art spanned to my mind's eye by that rainbow which is formed by memory's sunset shining on tears for departed dear ones, disappointed hopes, and lost loves and joys !"
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