theatricals so marvellously as we are asked to believe without cheering
herself, by such an artistic success, out of the temptation to suicide. But
the ways of morbidity are unsearchable, and this is no more than an
expression of individual opinion. It is not meant to qualify my admiration
for the skill of this remarkable and arresting story.

* * * * *

If the long postponement of the appearance of another novel--_Vesprie
Towers_ (SMITH, ELDER)--by the late Mr. THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON, means (I am
careful not to say it does) that the author never intended it to see the
light of day, honesty obliges one to admit that there may have been wisdom
in that decision, for the story of _Violet Vesprie_, though touched with a
certain charm and distinction, sadly lacks the imaginative intensity of
_Aylwin_. The plot is commonplace, being the familiar record of how the
country seat of a once illustrious family nearly, but of course not quite,
passed into the hands of strangers when the last of the race came to
poverty. Even the inevitable flight to London is not spared us or the
heroine, and it is really only when the writer tires of his attempted
conventionality that he comes more nearly to his own. The return of
_Violet_ to her old home, for instance, is most fortunate in its failure to
follow the rules, that attractive young lady being quite content to be
whisked back in the turning of a page from destitution in Lambeth to the
place she loves, without knowing or caring at all how the miracle has been
wrought; while we, reader and author alike, equally in the dark, are too
happy to have her home to worry about it either, preferring to wander with
her through the dear old rooms and let explanations go hang. Anyhow,
perhaps one can forgive a certain amount of looseness in a story that holds
such pleasant things as a family rainbow, an "osier ait" and a sailor-poet
worshipping from afar. And indeed, though far from brilliant, the book is