The Life's Mistake which forms the theme of Mrs. Lovett Cameron's two
volumes is not a mistake after all, but results in unmixed felicity; and
as it is brought about by fraud on the part of the hero, this conclusion
is not as moral as it might be. For the rest, the tale is a very
familiar one. Its personages are the embarrassed squire with his
charming daughter, the wealthy and amorous mortgagee, and the sailor
lover who is either supposed to be drowned or falsely represented to be
fickle--in Mrs. Cameron's tale he is both in succession. When we add
that there is a stanza from Byron on the title-page and a poetical
quotation at the beginning of each chapter, we have possessed the
discerning reader of all necessary information both as to the matter and
the manner of Mrs. Cameron's performance.

Mr. E. O. Pleydell-Bouverie has endowed the novel-writing fraternity with
a new formula for the composition of titles. After J. S.; or,
Trivialities there is no reason why we should not have A. B.; or,
Platitudes, M.N.; or, Sentimentalisms, Y.Z.; or, Inanities. There are
many books which these simple titles would characterise much more aptly
than any high-flown phrases--as aptly, in fact, as Mr. Bouverie's title
characterises the volume before us. It sets forth the uninteresting
fortunes of an insignificant person, one John Stiles, a briefless
barrister. The said John falls in love with a young lady, inherits a
competence, omits to tell his love, and is killed by the bursting of a
fowling-piece--that is all. The only point of interest presented by the
book is the problem as to how it ever came to be written. We can
scarcely find the solution in Mr. Bouverie's elaborately smart style
which cannot be said to transmute his 'trivialities' into 'flies in
amber.'

Mr. Swinburne once proposed that it should be a penal offence against