NOVELS OF THE MONTH. 



" LOVE AND PRIDE ;"* " Gale MiuDLETON."t Two of our most 

 popular novelists have laid fresh offerings on the huge altar of public 

 entertainment during the month. Such works come opportunely at 

 a season of merry making and general relaxation. Theodore Hook, 

 the author of ' e Love and Pride/' two tales written, as the newspapers 

 say, in the author's very best style, is, of all others, just the man for 

 our moments of festivity, for think as you will before you take his 

 volumes up, you are always sure to laugh before you lay them down. 

 "Love" is the story of a young barrister, who, with four hundred 

 a-year and the prospects of a profession, which as yet has yielded him 

 no business, becomes enamoured of a young lady who has all that can 

 interest and charm, added to what her mother may leave her. Her 

 mother, she is a widow, has an old friend, a retired merchant, one of 

 the family of great Smith's, rich as Rothschild, and as the widow ima- 

 gines, about to marry herself but really about to marry her daughter. 

 How the poor girl is coaxed and brow-beaten into this match ; how 

 the briefless barrister pursues her ; how strange mischances and 

 laughable mishaps keep them apart, although he has the advantage 

 of being counselled and assisted by one Twigg, a most diplomatic 

 servant-man, who always leads his master and generally leads him 

 so far right, as getting stowed in a Granville steamer filled with 

 squeaking pigs, instead going on board the Cowes steamer freighted 

 with gentle tourists, may be considered no mistake ; how the girl 

 marries Smith, and Smith dies, and the lovers for, good souls, 

 they love on notwithstanding the marriage finally fall into each 

 others arms never more to be parted, at the moment the reader 

 imagines there is no hope for such a consummation all this and a 

 good deal more that is lively, out of the way and farcical, makes 

 up the story of " Love." " Pride " has more of life and character : 

 it is the history of a Whig Lord Snowdon, a sort of stone model of 

 a cold, proud, selfish, ambitious peer, who has not a thought and 

 feeling for any one but himself. The interest of the tale is admirably 

 sustained by shewing how he plans a marriage for himself and a 

 marriage for his son, and a marriage for his daughter, and to crown 

 all his greatness rats from his party to get himself made Governor 

 General of India, but after all, fails completely in every object he 

 had so heartlessly contrived and pursued while his children are hap- 

 pily settled as their virtues merit and their loves incline. 



These tales are in many respects equal, and in none inferior, to 

 any the author has produced. He seems to have written them as 

 soon as thought of, and in the hurry of composition several points are 

 somewhat infelicitously forced for the sake of effect. But if they do 

 not add to, they will at least maintain his reputation at the very high 

 point it has now for years attained. And that reputation it may be 



* By the Author of " Sayings and Doings," 3 vols. Whittaker and Co. 

 f- By the Author of" Brambletye House," 3 vols. R. Bentley. 



