Sibylla is silly and vain, a vulgar flirt, and ruinously extravagant, and a woman thus endowed, we all know, can say and do things called incredible. She tests her husband's heroic virtue and forbearance to the uttermoet, and the moment comes when their seems a road of escape for him. A ghost appears on the scene who drives the rustics out of their wits, and presently convinces wiser observers that the lady's first husband (for Sibylla was a widow) was in life. The news reaches Lionel, and also the lady, who manifests very little concern at the reappearance, when she ascertains that whoever is her husband, she still remains mistress of Verner's Pride. Some persons of scrupulous mind recommend the withdrawal of the lady into retirement until the mystery is solved; but it seems considered a noble generosity in the hero that he stands by his wife, who, whenever she is in a pet, declares her preference for her first choice; though the whole point of the merit lies in the fact that he really likes the ill-used Lucy best, and, in fact, tells her so whenever they are together. We have innumerable passages like the following: "He crossed over to her and laid his hand fondly and gently on her head as he moved to May God forgive me, Lucy,' broke nel, who agree that they have had long to wait for their present happiness, an ill-chosen word surely where a living wife has been a hindrance. en There is much in "Verner's Pride tirely beneath criticism — irrelevant matter, awkwardly brought in and awkwardly expressed. Indeed, both in grace of style and aptitude to embrace the variety and poetry of any scene she describes, this writer in her best efforts falls greatly short of the two ladies we have classed with her, as illustrating a certain literary phase of our day-the Hon. Mrs. Norton and Miss Braddon-though the moral tone, in profession, and as entertaining the idea of duty when opposed to feeling, is superior to either. Mrs. Norton's best friends are obliged to admit that her story, "Lost and Saved," is unfit for the drawing-room table, and ought to be kept out of the way of young ladies. In fact, in urging a great wrong upon the world, she is supposed to be compelled to disregard minor proprieties. The alleged purpose of the book is to show, that while the faults of women are visited as sins, the sins of men are not even visited as faults. She fights the battle of her sex by showing the injustice of the world, in its severity towards the door. a certain class of errors, if committed by the from his white trembling lips. My own pun-helpless and the weak, and the tolerance of ishment is heavier than yours.' "" Verner's the same and much worse when perpetrated Pride, vol. ii. p. 127. by the powerful and strong. Its highest After such scenes we find him indeed mak- morality as we see it is, that to sin with feeling amende to his wife," My little wife, if ing is better than to sin without. There is you cared for me as I care for you," etc. etc., the artifice of making a certain class of errors with the explanation-" And there was no look light, by contrasting them with extremes sophistry in this speech. He had come to of egotism, malignity, and positive crime; the conviction that Lucy ought to have been and the exigencies of the argument require his wife; but he did care for Sibylla very society to be painted in the strongest and much." The above fatherly and hencdictory harshest colors. We observe that her admircaress we observe to be coming very much into ers assume the leading characters to be, if fashion upon paper, as a sort of disinfectant not actual portraits, at least very intimate of questionable scenes, rendering harmless a studies; and it is certainly more charitable good deal of flirtation which might otherwise to suppose that certain individuals are indibe deemed of very doubtful propriety. In the cated by these studies" than that they repmatter of the ghost Lionel proved to be right, resent to the writer's mind the prevailing as the apparition turned out not to be the characteristics of noble and fashionable sofirst husband, but an elder brother, also sup-ciety in our own day. Mrs. H. Wood writes posed to be dead, assuming his likeness. So about great people in artless and transparent Sibylla loses Verner's Pride after all, and ignorance of the gay world she describes. trics her husband's indomitable patience, till Mrs. Norton cannot be ignorant, but someshe conveniently kills herself by going to a thing else may make her pictures as little ball in a critical state of health. The story trustworthy. When a writer has opportuof course ends in the union of Lucy and Lio-nities of knowing that he is writing about "And how the world loved Milly." * * * "For there is a little society in a corner called The Society for the Suppression of Vice,' but there is a much larger society for its protection; and in that larger society Right and Wrong do not signify, but Success and Non-Success."-Lost and Saved, vol. ii. P. 86. And Milly is loved by the world in no ignorance of her real qualities. All her friends would have recognized her in the description— "Her body was lithe as the liana, and her soul was the soul of the snake-rampant, watchful, cautious-till a safe noiseless spring and a sudden coil gave her her prey."-P. 88. superiors, perhaps, to his reador, that reader | sustaining her credit and fascinations undisis apt to put on a deferential state of mind; turbed to the end. but the deference may be wholly misplaced. If Sir Bulwer Lytton, though familiar with statesmen, may present to us the expansive exuberant prime minister we meet with in his novels, and nowhere else; if a college fellow draw a picture of university life absolutely at variance with his experience; and if a schoolmaster delineate impossible boys, then may a fine lady paint society such as she has never seen it, knowing better all the while, but doing it simply for amusement, or because there is wanting the power to see things as they are, or because a theory demands it, or the plot of a story must have it, or because it would be pleasant if it were so, or from disappointment, or temper, or malice. Any of these causes are, we see, sufficient to make an author reverse, and utterly defy his knowledge. In Mrs. Norton's case, it need only be that some bitter and angry soreness has tempted her to extreme limits of exaggeration and caricature. Her peeresses have certainly a body and a tone about them very different from the dressed-up milliners of courageous inexperience; but she shows them through distorted glass, and in blue and lurid lights. Hence a veritable glimpse of Pandemonium. While page after page denounces the ill nature, scandal, and harsh judgment of the world, what is technically called society is shown us in an aspect which might lead us to suppose we had opened a cynical French novel in mistake. There are the same horrors of profligacy attributed to a class, and the same shameless intrigue as the habitual practice of persons receiving the respect and homage of the world. All vice seems to culminate in a certain Milly Nesdale. Milly is the wife of Lord Nesdale, and the mother of lovely children, whom she professes to foster and care for. She maintains the faint externals of duty and respectability and religion, but is in fact more of an atheist than M. About's hero who believed in Fridays, and has no more faith in Christianity than in Vishnu. Under a thin cloak of propriety she is a serpent, a witch, a fiend, betraying her trusting husband with malignant triumph, and doing and saying things which it is better to glance at than repeat. This lady is a universal favorite, courted by the hero's friends, as keeping him out of what their worldliness fears more, and While to her lover, who listens to her treacherous and base words, lightened by "The wily Hindoo smile which still lingered in Milly's features; it seemed that he had sold his soul to a species of charming water-witch rather than given his heart to a woman. The heroine, in contrast to this complicated wickedness, is a sweet, impulsive, highly gifted, unsophisticated girl, who is the victim of a mock marriage, which the world will not believe her to have been the dupe of. There is an air of this mock marriage being in deference to English prejudice. We cannot help thinking, had the story been written for French readers, it would have been dispensed with, for the whole tone of the book points to another state of things, and certainly pleads for those, unhappy and betrayed, who can pretend to no such extenuation. Otherwise, why hits, in the tone of the author of "No Name," at our "cruel laws," involving illegitimate children in "intolerable misfortune," for the ordinary victims of these laws have nothing to do with even the pretence of marriage. Moreover, when Beatrice learns that the so-called marriage was not legal, it makes no difference in her course of action; she waits where she is till the real marriage shall be performed. Mrs. Norton can draw a graceful picture of innocent, happy simplicity. Her heroine, though conventional, as are her father, her saintly sister, her midshipman brother, is often interesting. But she identifies her too closely with some one else for the simplicity to be genuine; her the battlements of a surrendering fortress. language, when moved and excited, is that Go before me into this den,' she said to of a passionate woman of the world. There Parkes, and show me where my lace is! I'm not going to be put off with false excuses are curious experiences given to her, true we dare say, but which really come at a much Mr. Sergeant, you are to follow me; you, Get me my lace. any longer, I can tell you. later date than the heroine stage. We must John, stand at the door. We'll soon see if own to some surprise, how any cultivated people are to be kept out of their property mind, refined by poetry, and even genius, can this way.' She pushed the door wide open possibly reduce a heroine to such extremities as Parkes crept in before her; and Parkes of degradation as are brought about in Bea- had only time to murmur that she hoped trice's search for a living, after she is aban-hear the word frightened in proudest conBeatrice would not feel frightened; and to doned by Treherne. The belief in intrinsic tempt, before the bulky and bulkily dressed purity ought to preserve any favorite concep-marchioness stood in the small room.' tion of the imagination from such contacts, such base suspicions; but, we believe, wherever there is unrestraint, whether the undisciplined element is found in a writer who talks of earls and marchionesses in blindest Beatrice refuses to give back the lace, and returns the money which had been sent for it. into custody. Take Parkes into custody; they are both accomplices.' Beatrice struck her open palm on the packet of bank-notes that lay on the table. Here,' she said, is the money you paid for that lace. I refuse to sell it to you. It is mine. This room is mine. Leave it.' "Ho!' almost screamed the marchioness; 'you dare, you bad, bad girl. Policeman, ignorance, or absolute knowledge, there is this is a bad girl who knew my nephew vulgarity the vulgarity of recklessness as to abroad, and tried to give me the plague. exact truth, or its consequences: a resolution Take the lace from her. It's my lace; I to say your say, to produce its effect, to prove bought it; I gave a hundred and seventy your point, and to secure readers at all haz-guineas for it. Take it from her; take her ards. In this unrestrained spirit is executed the portrait of the Marchioness of Updown, with all the details of her "corpulence," her "snorting," and coarsely selfish abandon. It has the air of a caricature of some person unfortunate enough to have incurred a lively authoress's ill will, and as it stands, seems as "You wicked girl; you bold, bad hussy! little likely to be a correct likeness of an indi- I insist on my lace. You want to sell it to vidual as it is of a class. However, the mar-It was worth a great deal more than 1 gave somebody else, because you're found out now. chioness forms the life of some spirited scenes; for it! Oh, you cheat, you; but it wont do. and though she is one of the respectable peo- I'll have my rights. Policeman, I bought ple who sanction the disreputable Nelly, her lace; get me the lace. Search the place; own errors are so far in a presentable form, take this young woman into custody. Why that we need not scruple to lay them before don't you take her when I order you?' our readers. This great lady is aunt of the wicked hero, Montague Treherne, and had known Beatrice in her happier days. Now, through a humble companion and amiable dependent, who had helped Beatrice in her sorest need, she comes again, though unknowingly, in contact with her as the purchaser of some valuable lace. Some slight error of the much-bullied companion had flurried the great lady's temper. Beatrice, who is now a lace-cleaner, had not returned the precious fabric as soon as expected. The Marchioness of Updown, flustered and furbelowed, and accompanied by the policeman whom she had summoned, makes her way to the heroine's poor lodgings. 6 66 The sergeant of police half smiled. He said in a deprecatory sort of manner: You receive the money, and wont part with the see, my lady, if the young woman declines to lace, I really don't know how I can act.' She did receive the money; and the lace was mine, and I will have it! She's a cheat; her father was a cheat before her, and her brother fired at the queen; and Í will have my lace!' "Beatrice looked scornfully up at her; You selfish', prosperous, cruel woman,' she said. Tyrannize over your own household! this room is mine, humble as it is; it is no place for you. Go away and leave me in peace. The lace will never be yours. I sent it away this morning, and I will never let you have it again.' "Where? where? Policeman, make her "The marchioness breasted the narrow say where she has sent it! You wicked toad, staircase as though she were about to scale | I don't believe you! I don't believe it's sent The marchioness returns to her splendid carriage, which had attracted a London mob. away. You want to wear it, I suppose. away. John, call the carriage. John, do You want to dress yourself up in frippery and you hear me, or not?'" finery to seduce more young men of good family, and try to get them to admire you, as you did my fool of a nephew. You seem to have had a pretty come down since then! Give me my lace,' shouted she, her rage appar ently increasing in the dead silence, with which she was permitted to rise; and she made a sort of angry movement in advance, pushing the table at which Beatrice was seated. "Come, come, my lady, there really must be none of this! Now do pray compose your self. Your ladyship had better come away -and the sergeant of police actually laid his hand on the august and obese arm, whose bracelets quivered with the wearer's passion. "How dare you touch me, MAN! gasped the marchioness. 6 If you can't do your duty, and take people into custody when you're told | to take them, at least don't dare meddle with ME, you impudent stupid.' and was driven rapidly away, the sergeant of "Into that carriage the baffled tyrant got, police saying quietly to a brother-constable whistle of contempt- Curious now, ain't it, -after giving vent to his feelings in a low Brown, how like females are one to t'other? This one's a real marchioness, with a real all that, and here she's been a behaving for sort of a marquis, dining with the queen, and all the world like Betsy Blane, the fishShe's as like her-as like as one oyster-shell woman, as I had in the lock-up last night. is to another!' and the brother-constable gave a smiling grunt of assent."-Lost and Saved, vol. iii. p. 20. Nor does Mrs. Norton fail to make good her place in the modern sensational school, Policeman,' said Beatrice, I take you by conceiving scenes in its extremest developand the lady who is here present to witness, ment. Not only does she give us one peeresa, that I return to the marchioness of Updown the money she sent for the lace she desires to a fshwife, and another carrying on correbuy, and which I refuse to sell. I can bear spondence which would sink her into lowest no more of this: I have been ill for some infamy, through the medium of advertisetime.' And so saying, Beatrice vanished ments in the Times' second column; but what into a little bed-closet, from which a tiny has been called our Arsenical Literature has staircase led to M. Dumont's workroom be-been enriched by a very thorough-going scene low. The marchioness positively shook with from her pen. The wicked peeress has, if rage at her disappearance. She stood for a possible, a more wicked aunt who has mated moment, her eyes glaring with amazement herself, not without a sense of degradation, and anger. Then seizing the bank-notes in to an honest attorney, superciliously indithe envelope, and turning suddenly on little cated by his titled employers as "that fellow Miss Parkes, she said, I discharge you, you Grey." Mrs. Myra Grey shares some of that vile, you wicked minx! I discharge you. Hindoo blood, fruitful of intrigue, which You are discharged! I hope you will starve. gives a wild charm to her niece, and possesses I sha'n't recommend I promise you. you, It's a pity you can't do like your beauty an ivory jewel-hafted dagger with which she there, and wear lace and coral to make gen-opens her husband's letters, and becomes postlemen fall in love with you. I discharge sessed of his client's secrets. On one occayou, mind! I forbid you to come back. Il sion she betrays knowledge thus surreptihave the doors shut upon you. Any rags tiously obtained, and the consequences threatyou may have left in my house can be packed ening to be disagreeable to herself, she proup and sent to you by Benson; and you don't deserve even that much kindness; nor-only ceeds, as though the means were at hand your salary was paid yesterday--you would any moment, to poison an inconvenient witnot get that, you cunning thief, you ! ' 6 Come, come, milady,' remonstrated the sergeant. Really such words are actionable. I'm here to keep the peace, you know. Your ladyship mustn't forget yourself this way.' "You go away, man! I ordered you here-now I order you to go away. I order you away. You've done no good: you haven't got my lace; you let all these low people have the best of it; you wont take people into custody, though you're told ever so; and I don't want you any more. Go ness. This is Maurice Lewellyn, the good genius of the story; he sits at her luncheontable previous to an interview with her husband, but refuses to eat. "Take at least a glass of wine-let me mix you some sherry and seltzer-water.' Ile bowed and stretched out his hand for the tumbler, struggling for at least some outward courtesy to this cunning and corrupt woman. She filled it and moved slowly away. "May you?' said Maurice. "Oh, yes, papa gave me some last Sunday for a treat." "Maurice held the glass to the child's lips. Mrs. Myra Grey was settling some flowers on the mantel-piece: she heard the boy's last words. Gave you what?' she said, turning towards them. Then she darted forward, and exclaiming, O my God!' she vehemently seized the child by both arms and drew him back from Lewellyn. 666 "I beg your pardon,' she said, with a strange smile, but my children never taste wine. 666 Montague Treherne sails next day in his yacht, is seized with spasms, procures the assistance of a doctor who pronounces it poison, not cholera as the sailors had supposed, and dies. The doctor brings the body to England, and informs Lewellyn of his opinion. Lewellyn has his strong suspicions, which might in fact be certainties, but— "What end, indeed, could it have served to bring to doubtful trial, and probable acquittal, the wife of the family solicitor? . . to disturb with an immense scandal the so ciety in which Montague and his relatives moved; and to receive no guerdon, when all was done, but resentment and reproach from his family?"—Vol. iii. p. 296. The murderess, therefore, is let alone, learns caution, and along with all the other bad people of the book, is taken leave of by the O mamma-last Sunday.' reader in unabated prosperity and confirmed "Come away, you are a naughty riotous social credit and standing. The marboy, and must go up-stairs.' She led the chioness is still the person who occupies most child away. As she opened the door, Lewel-attention (and most space) at all the balls lyn heard her say, 'Did you swallow any of it? Spit! spit out upon the door-rug,' and given by royalty and by the subjects of roythe child said, La! mamma, I had not even alty." And Nelly, in spite of a letter to her got my lips to the glass when you pulled me angry and malignant aunt, which sounds like away.' an imprudence, is in greater favor with her husband and the world than ever. Beatrice is taken up and restored to society by kind friends, marries an Italian count, not handsome, but with a voice, "unutterably sad, unutterably sweet," who has been forsaken by his wife, and the curtain closes on the young mother hanging over the cradle of her baby. For calm, serene, domestic felicity, the very last thing these heroines of many stormy adventures are fit for, is always the haven assigned to them. It is easier, in fact, to turn nun, hospital nurse, or sister of mercy, to take up and carry through the professed vocation of a saint, than to work out the English ideal of wife, mother, and presiding spirit of the house, after any wide is one of the most mischievous points of a departure from custom and decorum; and it bad moral that leads the young and inexperienced reader to suppose otherwise. Lewellyn, who is an acute lawyer, has his suspicions, and in her absence takes out of his pocket an empty flask, and pours into it half the contents of the tumbler. When he gets home he administers the mixture to a dog, which after some hours, dies of convulsions. In the meanwhile, a second guest, Montague Treherne, the betrayer of Beatrice, arrives at the same luncheon-table, and, after angry words with Mrs. Myra, drinks off the remainining contents of the tumbler—a curious thing, by the way, for a fastidious very fine gentleman to do. The lady witnesses the act. "Her eyes were riveted upon the glass in his hand. Her countenance assumed a strange expression of mingled defiance and she said, in a sort of fright- 6 Then rising once more, with a ghastly face, she proceeded carefully to rinse the goblet out of which he had drunk, the glass Maurice had used, and the small decanter that stood by them."-Lost and Saved, vol. iii. p. 249. If Mrs. Norton attacks apparent and recog nized respectability, professes to unmask false pretences, and shows that the worst people are those most in the world's good graces, Miss Braddon, the first and, at present, preeminent sensation writer, sets herself to defy and expose the real thing. Her bad people don't pretend only to be good: they are respectable; they really work, nay slave, in |