Nothing but Money. By T. S. Arthur. (Railway Library, Routledge.)—
" Oh, man ! whoever thou art, wherever thou art,—oh, man, in whose mind the thought of gold shines ever- as a star of brightest promise, take into your heart, and ponder it well, the life-history " that this author has written, he adjures you. The star-gazer in question will learn from it that his wife sickens and his children turn out bad, and that he himself. will become the prey of a strong-minded housekeeper, who will take- possession of his gold, and lock him up in a lunatic asylum. All this will ensue if he quarrels with his wife about the price of flowers, and is not converted when she inforths him that "there is no harm in flowers;' they destroy nothing, but on the contrary restore to the mind much that is lost in our jarring life experiences." Nothing can be duller than the story which is thus introduced to the reader. The scene is laid in. America, where the passion for money-making may have reached such a desperate height that even this feeble protest against it has its uses, but why it should have been imported into this country, where people certainly do not talk about money all day long to their wives and chil- dren, and certainly do require something good in a novel besides the moral, we are at a loss to conjecture, unless the reason be that it cost the publishers nothing, but the pain of doing evil that a good law of international copyright may come.
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