Altogether we congratulate Mr. Gibbon on a second very marked success, which bids fair to place him, as a describer of Scottish forms of our common humanity, at no very great distance from George Macdonald.
_The Beautiful Miss Harrington._ By HOLME LEE, Author of 'Basil Godfrey's Caprice,' &c. Smith, Elder, and Co.
The accomplished writer who passes by the pseudonym of Holme Lee has added to her reputation by this novel. It is written with great care and felicitousness of style, with perfect taste, and much delicacy of conception. As might be expected, it is pure as the driven snow, and very life-like in delineation. It professes to be written by one of the principal actors in the tragic story, the wife of the rector of the parish in which the history developes itself, and every complication of event and thought, and all the balancings of motive reach the reader through the heart and mind of this one individual. She is a nimble, strong-minded little woman, with an abhorrence of shams, and an outspokenness at times quite astonishing. This old, old story of love arrested by family pride and selfishness, and ending in cruel disappointment and perverse conjugal relations, in a semblance of madness, in cruel suspicions, fever, and death, has often been told, but not often from the standpoint of a sympathetic, loving spectator and intimate friend of the suffering heroine. The only drawback is, that we are never admitted to the secret heart of any masculine actor in the drama; we are never introduced into the privacy of the lover, or the father, or the grasping heir-at-law of the 'beautiful Miss Barrington.' The presumed biographer is always present, or quoting extracts from Felicia Barrington's letters, or relating the gossip of her friends or her enemies. We question whether poetical justice is altogether done, either to the selfish father, the long-suffering husband, or to the sneaking, hypocritical reptile who is the marplot of Felicia's happiness. There are so many ways in which the machinations of her enemies might have easily been disappointed, that it is evident that Holme Lee repudiates the position of being 'privy councillor to Providence,' to use one of her own expressions. Felicia does conquer world, flesh, and devil after a fashion, and her cruelly-used, high-minded, but intolerably blundering lover, notwithstanding his gentleness and his Victoria Cross, his forbearance and patience, deserves his fate; but then, after he has intentionally broken the tender heart of the heroine, he provokingly consoles himself with another love. We are not sure that a ward in Chancery and heiress of entailed estates could have conferred on her husband such powers as the wife and daughter of Mr. Barrington successively entrusted to him; but let that pass. We thank Holme Lee for her fascinating story, the moral of which is,--let young lovers be true to their plighted word, though fathers, guardians, duennas, family dignity, titled suitors, death's heads and cross-bones all demand instant and precipitate repudiation.