Mrs. Craigie has achieved her position in the front rank of living British novelists, and the reader who takes up Love and the Soul Hunters knows beforehand that his time is not going to be wasted. Something of a story there is in it, but a story without any very definite end clever characterisation, so that the persons of the drama really exist for a little while, at any rate and decidedly clever dialogue.' The ingenue heroine is a fine, high-principled girl, who falls deeply in love with a Prince' who endeavours in a long interview to persuade her to marry him jrorganatically, and who is finally compelled by his love to marry her straightforwardly and without any arridre pense; but the real heroine is the ingenue's mother, a beautiful American who has been divorced by the young heroine's feeble but. gentlemanly father and is believed by her to be dead; who is described as reckless, unmoral self-absorbed, and highly artistic, the pride of dressmakers, and the pen: sioned love of two rich Russians." At the time of the story "La Belle Valentine," as she is called, is the beloved of a self-made American millionaire, Cobden Duryee, who has known her from childhood' and is anxious to marry her, ignoring her past. With his aid she becomes the good genius of her divorced husband, her daughter, and the Prince; and it is impossible not to like her, so clearly does Mrs. Craigie make the reader understand that she is only unmoral, not immoral, Her daughter, the youn; heroine, as a little girl, had "been a go child with a gay disposition and pretty ways, She could stoat on to a knee, and perched there, sit like a flower on its stem, scareely moving. She inclined towards caresses, and was fond of touching or stroking or petting those whom she found sympathetic. Yet, with all this, she was known to be somewhat cold—self-sufficient without being ungraciously selfish. Now at two-and-twenty she was well educated, observant, rather sarcastic, and far too impulsive in spite of her calm demeanour, There are two kinds of composure. One is morbid and arises from a feeble or fatigued vitality. It betokens a genuine lack of interest in all things and is the least pleasing form of egoism. The other kind, which is magnetic, is the sign of complete sanity—a heart at peace and a physical organisation without weakness. This last was the composure characteristic of Miss Gloucester. She had never experienced strong emotion, " violent sentiment, a really unhappy hour. Her face, in spite of its fitful and almost mocking beauty, seemed as unalterable in its lines as some calm portrait by Leonardo da Vinci." Admirably portrayed asClementineGloucester is in the main, this sketch from the second chapter of the book is out of drat ing. A girl so coldly and calmly beautiful would never have been fond of touching or stroking or petting even those whom she found sympathetic.
'The Prince, who is all that is charming and fickle, has a very aristocratic and unhappy mother (they are exiles from their' country), Queen Charlotte, and a secretary, Dr. Karl Felshammer, a middle-aged man of great abilities and strong passions, who is also desperately in love with Clementine. This preface makes the following extract intelligible; and it may safely be predicted that anyone who reads it will want to get
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.