The Vicar of Langthwaite. By Lily Watson. 3 vols. (Bentley
and Son.)—The "running title" throughout the book is "The Professor's Daughter." The change has had to be made, we sup- pose, for copyright reasons, but it is a change for the better, as far as the description of contents is concerned. The parson is a much more distinct, and we may add interesting, character than the lady, though she, too, is a not unsuccessful study. Mr. Ceram is a High Churchman, who thinks celibacy an obligation on the clergy. Almost against his will he falls in love with the daughter of a Professer in a Nonconformist College, and has the greatest struggle in resolving to give her up. This he does at last under the influence of a spiritual director's counsels. As at the same time he leaves the Anglican Church, to which his allegiance had always been somewhat frail, he might have solved both difficulties at once. According to Roman views, his Anglican Orders were of no value, and he was consequently as free to marry as any other layman. So wise a person as the Abbe Lacroire might have seen that this would have been better for him than to "become a parish priest somewhere," the fate reserved for Mr. Carfax. The priests of Rome are carefully trained from early years to regard matrimony as an impossibility. A man with Mr. Carfax's strange experiences should have been sent either to the order of La. Trappe or back into the world. There are many good things in the story ; the parts which touch on the relation between the Church and Nonconformity are particularly to be praised.
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