No, XIII : the Story of the Lost Vestal. By
Emma Marshall. (Cassell and Co )—In the Atrium Vesta, not longago discovered in the Forum, there are certain statues of the Vestales Maxima, and among them one from which the name has been erased. Mrs. Mar- shall works this ingeniously into her story. The "Lost Vestal" is a Maxima, who dies a Christian, and her name has been erased by her successor in the office from mixed motives of jealousy and hatred of her creed, which she lives long enough to acknowledge, though she nevertheless dies in the odour of pagan. sanctity. The early scenes are laid at Verulam, at the time of the martyrdom of St. Alban ; the later chiefly at Rome. The story is connected with great interests, and does them, on the whole, fair justice. Some little details are not quite in harmony. " Hyacinthe Severe" and " Ccelia Con- cordia," for instance, are scarcely names which would have been borne by noble Roman ladies.
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