xxw NOVELS.'

IF any reader of ours thinks of taking a semi-detached house on the banks of the Thames, he had better be quick about it, for there will be a run upon that sort of property, for which the owners will have to thank Lady Theresa Lewis. Her novel has only one fault, a grievous and most unusual fault indeed—it is too short. Oh, Lady Theresa, why did you not make it as long as the longest of Richardson's P You could have done it so easily, for all the world can see that you write charmingly without an effort. Partridge would vow that you are no more an author than Garrick was an actor. The story of The Semi-detached House is the simplest thing possible. Lady Chester has been married but six months, and she and her husband are as foolishly in love as all young couples are or ought to be. Her father-in-

• The Semi-detached House. Edited by Lady Theresa Lewis. Published by

4 for a Life. Hy the Author of ".John Halifax, Gentleman." 3 vols.

Published by Hurst and Blackett.

law, who is not a lover but a Cabinet Minister, insists on his son's accepting an offer to join a special mission to Berlin, and the family physician will not hear of Lady Chester's going abroad in her very interesting state of health. He wishes her to leave London, but still to be within his reach, and so Pleasance is taken, a villa which is everything one could wish, but for one fault. Lady Chester is sure she shall hate " her semi-detach- ment, or whatever the occupants of the other half of the house may call themselves" • and thereupon Aunt Sarah tells her they

call themselves Hopkinson,

" 'I knew it,' said Blanche, triumphantly; I felt certain their names would be either Tomkinson or Hopkinson—I was not sure which—but I thought the chances were in favour of Hop rather than Torn Did you see any-of theHopkinsons when you went to look at the house ?'

" Yes, they went in at their door just as I went in at yours. The mother, as I suppose, and two daughters, and a little boy.' " Oh, dear me ! a little boy, who will always be throwing stones at the palings, and making me jump ; daughters who will always be playing Partant pour In Syne ;' and the mother—' " Well, what will she do to offend your Highness?'

" She will be immensely fat, wear mittens—thick, heavy mittens, and contrive to know -what I have for dinner every day.' " There was a silence, another row of netting, and a turn of the mesh, and then Aunt Sarah said, in her most composed tone—'I often think, my dear. that it is a pity you are so imaginative, and a still greater pity that you are so fastidious. You would be happier if you were as dull and as matter-ofv fact as I am.'

"4 Dear Aunt Sarah, don't say you are dull. There is nobody I like so much to talk to. You bring out such original remarks, such convincing truths, and in a quiet way, so that they do not make the black bruises which lea verites dares' generally produce. But ens I fastidious and imaginative ? ' ' Yes, my dear, very painfully so. Now, just consider, Blanche ; you began this week by throwing yourself into a fever because Arthur was to leave you, on a mission that may be of great future advantage to him. Re is to be away only three months, and is as much grieved as you are at the separation it involves. You immediately assert that he is going for a year, at least, that he is to forget you instantly, and fall in love with any and every other woman he sees.'

" Ne, only with that woman with the unpronounceable name that he used to dance with ; a very dangerous woman, Aunt Sarah.' " 'That he is to be smashed in the railroad to Folkestone, drowned off Antwerp, and finally die of a fever at Berlin ; and that in the meanwhile, you are to have a dead child immediately, twins soon after, a very bad con- finement, besides dying of consumption, and various other maladies,' pur- sued Aunt Sarah, in her steadiest tone. ' Now, if those are not vain imaginings, Blanche, I do not know what are.' They sound plausible, though; and I assure you, Aunt, I did not imagine them ; they suggested themselves, and they look very like the or- dinary facts of life. However, I grant it is a bad habit to look forward to evils that may not occur ; but then, you know, I am ill. I never had these grey thoughts when I was strong, and Arthur's going away has turned them all black—and now as to my fastidiousness.' " You always were fastidious, my child, easily jarred by the slightest want of tact and refinement, and I am not much surprised,' added Aunt Sarah, as she looked fondly at her niece. There was something startling in the mobility of Blanche's beautiful features, every thought that passed through her mind might be read in her kindling eyes and expressive lips; she looked too ethereal for contact with the vulgar ills of life. " I will allow you have some right to be fastidious, darling ; and it is i only because it interferes with your comfort, that I object to it. But yon cannot go and stay with Lord Chesterton, because he calls you ' Blanket; and thinks it a good joke ; nor with your sister-in-law, Lady Elinor, because Sir William is fond of money, and you foresee he will say that you cost him at least seventeen shillings and fourpence a day ; nor with your Aunt Carey, because the doctor who would attend you wears creaking boots, and calls you my Lady ; and now you object to a house that all your friends and your doctor recommend, because it is passible that your next-door neighbour may play on the pianoforte and wear black mittens. Dear Blanche, this is what I call over-fastidiousness ; and now I have finished my ten rows, and said all the disagreeable things I could think of, so I will go, and leave you to think how officious and particular old Aunt Sarah is.'

" You know I shall think no such thing,' said Blanche, half crying and half laughing, but you must own, Aunt Sarah, that when you string all my fancies together, they are rather amusing—wrong, if you please, but amusing. However, I will try to reform, and if Arthur likes Pleasance, which he is gone to see, and if Dr. Ayscough persists in driving me out of London, I will establish myself in my semi-detached villa, and try to get into the Hopkinson set.' " It may be inferred from the above conversation, that Blanche was slightly spoiled, but she was charming, nevertheless—sweet-tempered and playful, and with high spirits, now subdued by the approaching separation from her husband."

Now it so turns out that Mrs. Hopkinson does actually wear black mittens and is fat, and that her daughters play the piano ; and yet it is not long before we find Lady Chester cordially loving her unfashionable and unpretending semi-detachment," and successfully devising means to make them her neighbours for life. It could not be otherwise when there was so much that was loveable on both sides ; and then, too, the ladies had been friends by proxy before they met, for who should John Hopkinson be but the very captain by whom Lord Chester, (then Captain Temple- ton,) had been nursed through a bad fever on his passage to the Cape ; and was not Captain Templeton the very life and soul of the Alert till lie fell ill, and did not he say that Florence Nightin- gale could not make a better nurse than John, and that he liked the name of Hopkinson ? So the story runs its course in the most natural way in the world, other characters falling into the move- ment as it proceeds, and displaying their several humours to the great delight of the reader. It is a piece of real life, sketched by a spectator full of shrewd sense and a genial spirit of fun, tempera( by .good breeding and true womanly feeling. If Madame de Sevigne were to come to life again, as an English lady of the Court of Queen Victoria, she might write a book which would match with "The Semi-detached House."

In any work by the author of "John Halifax" we axe sure to find much to admire—a lofty and generous tone of feeling, proofs of perceptive and graphic power, and the language of a conscientious literary artist. These good things we discover in .1 Life for a Life, but along with them go two faults which constantly mar their effect : the narrative is badly planned, and the story is built uton a false foundation, upon facts which could only occur in a novel, but never in real life. The principal actors in it are two lovers, Dora Johnston and Doctor -Max Urquhart, and its whole course is revealed to us by chapters taken alternately from their respective journals. The result of this clumsy mechanism may easily be imagined ; it affects the reader as a five net play might do which consisted entirely of soliloquies. Reflection and intro- spection greatly predominate over incident in the contents of the two journals ; there is little to excite expectation, for the main issues of the story are foreseen from the outset ; now and then some good bits of dialogue are reported, but there is no wit, no humour, and, in short, very little to relieve the monotony of a mode of composition which would need the impassioned eloquence of a Rousseau to save it from being tedious. So much for the foxes of the story ; now for its matter : this turns entirely, if we confine ourselves to the principal characters, on an impediment to the marriage of Dora and Max, which is unknown until the end of the second volume, except to himself and the reader. He is described as a man of the purest worth, firm of purpose, sound in judgment, esteemed by all who know him, and worthy of any woman's love; but helms shunned love for twenty years, because his life is not his own, it is owed. What he means by this phrase is not always clear to himself, much less to the reader. At times his language seems to imply that he deems it his duty to get hanged some time or other, but generally his view of the matter is hazy and unintelligible. He had the misfortune to kill a man in his youth, unintentionally, inn scuffle to which he was provoked by the most wanton cruelty and by the instinct of self-preservation. r

ly left an orphan he was piously reared in Scotland with his elder brother, till the latter went abroad in ill health, and Max went to London and plunged into dissolute habits. From these he was recalled by a letter from his brother entreating him to come instantly to Pan. He started for the coast, but by mistake took the coach for Salisbury instead of Southampton. It was driven by a reprobate gentleman, who took the lad to the White Hart, made him drank, and then joined with one or two others in licking 'him into the street.

"I staggered through the dark, silent town, into a lane, and fell asleep on the road-side.

"The next thing I call to mind is being awakened by the cut of a whip across my shoulders, and seeing a man standing over me. I flew at his throat like a wild creature; for it was he—the 'gentleman' who had made me drunk, and mocked me ; and whom I seemedthm and there to hate with a fury of hatred that would last to my dying day. Through it all, came the thought of Dallas, sick and solitary, half way towards whom I ought to have travelled by now. 4' How he—the man—soothed me, I do not know, but I think it was by offering to take me towards Dallas ; he bad a horse and gig standing by, mid said if I would mount, he would drive me to the coast, whence I could take boat to France. At least, that is the vague impression my mind retains of what passed between us. He helped me up beside him, and I dozed off to sleep again. 4' My next wakening was in the middle of a desolate plain. I rubbed my eyes, but saw nothing except stars and sky, and this black, black plain, which seemed to have no end.

" He pulled up, and told me to ' tumble out,' which I did 'mechanically. On the other side of the gig was something tall and dark, which I took at first for a half-way inn, but perceived it was only a huge stone—a circle of :5" Rollo! what's this ?'

"4 Stonehenge ! comfortable lodging for man and beast"; so you're all right. Good-bye, young fellow. You're such dull company, that I mean to leeve you here till morning.' " This was what he said to me, laughing uproariously. At first I thought he was in jest, and laughed I:10 ; then, being sleepy and maudlin, I remonstrated. Lastly, I got half frightened, lor when I tried to mount, he pushed me down. I was so helpless, and he so strong ; from this solitary place, miles and miles from any human dwelling—how should I get on to Dallas ?—Dallas, who, stupefied 'as I was, still remained my prominent thought.

" I begged, as if I had been begging for my life, that he would keep his promise, and take me on my way towards my brother. " ' To the devil with your brother !' and he whipped his horse on.

"The Devil was in me, as I said. I sprang at him, my strength doubled and trebled with rage, and, catching him unawares, dragged him from the gig and threw him violently on the ground ; his head struck against one of the great stones—and—and- "Now, you see how it was. I murdered him. He must have died easily —instantaneously; he never moaned nor stirred once ; but, for all that, it was murder.

'Not with intent, God knows. So little idea had I he was dead, that I shook him as he lay, told him to 4 get up and fight it out ; ' oh, my God? my God! "Thus I have told it, the secret, which -until now has never been written or spoken to any human being. I was then nineteen—I am now nine-and- thirty twenty years. Theodora, have pity ; only think of carrying such a secret—the blood of a man on one's conscience for twenty years ! '

The homicide escaped to France, became insane, and was nursed for months by the cure who had buried his brother. When his reason returned his reflections took this shape.

Young as I was and ignorant of English criminal law, I had sufficient common sense to arrive at the conclusion, that, as things stood, there was not a fragment of evidence against me individually, nor, indeed, any clear evidence to show that the man was murdered at all. It was now a year ago—he must have long since been found and buried—probably, with little inquiry; they would conclude he had been killed accidentally through his own careless, drunken driving. But if I once confessed and delivered my- self up to justice, I myself only knew, and no evidence could ever prove, that it was not a case of wilful murder. I should be hanged—hanged by the neck till I was dead—and Any name—our name, Dallas's and mine, blasted for evermore." Now it is conceivable that a green boy should have been silly enough to think in this way, but it is impossible that a man of sense and large experience should have remained for twenty years so ignorant of the first principles of English law as to suppose that a man arraigned of manslaughter, solely upon his own con- fession, might be thereupon convicted of murder ; in other words that it is usual to hang men upon suspicion unless they can prove themselves innocent. Then, as to the moral aspect of the cleed, this also is beheld through a fog, distorted and exaggerated. Max resolves very properly to atone for the homicide be has com- mitted by devoting his best energies to the saving of life, but he believes, or pretends to believe, that his offence is unpardonable in the eye of God and of man, and that he must dree his weird in loneliness.

" Could I tell my wife, or the woman whom I would fain teach to love me, my whole history? Ind if I did, would it not close the door of her heart eternally against me ? or, supposing it was too late for that, and she already loved me, would it not make her, for my sake, miserable for life ? I believe it would."

The man were it for Bedlam whom twenty weeks, not to say twenty years, of an active and useful life as an army surgeon. did not cure of this brainsiok nonsense. Having resolved never to marry, Dr. Urquhart of course woos and wins Dora Johnston, and not until she is betrothed to him does he think, for the first time in twenty years, of making any inquiries about the man he had killed and the family to whom his life was " owed." The victim proves to have been the half-brother of Dora Johnston, and. the best thing in the book is that she does not forsake her be- trothed husband when the discovery is made. Ultimately, the doctor does what any man of sense and spirit, who was not the hero of a novel, would have done at first: he surrenders to take his trial, pleads guilty, and is sentenced-0 bathos !—to three. months' imprisonment, without hard labour.

Considering how unreal Miss Mulock has made Dr. Urquhart appear as a man, it is comparatively unimportant to remark the professional blunders of which she has made him guilty. Shock-'. ing twaddle she makes him talk about insanity ; and she puts into his month scraps of physiology picked up from newspapers, and used with a ludicrous misconception of their meaning. He proposes to give up his appointment as an army surgeon, and she sets him thinking of what he will do with the money which selling out will bring him! A surgeon selling out! But it is all of a piece. Miss Mulock's picture is not drawn from life ; she has constructed her elephant out of the depths of her moral con- sciousness, and it turns out to be an amphibious pachyderm, " wot can't live on the land and dies in the water."