CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Snap Gold Ring. By Frederick Wedmore. (Smith and Elder.,)-- This is a cleverly written without being a good novel. The hero, an artist and a man of culture, begins bie career by introducing himself ira a very free-and-easy fashion, to a young drosamakor. Hero, thinks the reader, is the "gold ring," fragile enough to be easily ,4 sespb.P? The reader is mistaken. The dressmaker's acquaintance with the hero has for its end his introduction to the real heroine, who is a lady by birth and education. She herself is the ehief character of a lively little episode, intended to relieve the sadness of the general story, for she takes to the stage, and begins what promises to be a successful career. The artist and scholar finds his wife, who is one of the gentlest and sweetest of beings, but who knows vary little and is not very clever, some- what wearisome. Hence ho is not unwilling to leave her in England, while he goes to follow his art with better opportunities abroad. While Clore he falls, with scarcely an effort of resistance, which indeed the author has not led us to expect from him, under the power of a pro- fligate woman, in whom Mr. Wodinoro must anyhow be allowod the credit of drawing a most repulsive character. The wife, hastening to nurse her husband who has fallen sick and been deserted by his Mossolino, discovers his infidelity, and dies of a broken heart. Meanwhile, there has occurred a tragic: episode,—Mossalina's husband hurrying to take vengoance, and killed by a fall from his carriage. This is not a pleasant otory, yet it might have been made into something impressive ; but then the reader's attention should not have been diverted from it, but kept continually fixed till it was wrought up to the final catastrophe. But isolated bits of writing, sketches of character, eto., are excellently done. There are especially some capital criticisms on French art. The dramatic personages are well drawn. So is the schoolmistress of advanced opinions. So is the amateur detective, Mr. Byng. Altogother it is a readable book, which, we cannot but think, the author, had he taken pains, might have made into a good one.
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