there is a felicitous touch worthy of Jane Austen's hand; as when Lady Atherley listens tranquilly to Mrs. Mostyn's tirade against the ritualistic curate, and evolves from it the one judicious conclusion that he is evidently an Austyn of Temple Leigh, and that it would be desirable to ask him to dinner.
The real drawback to Lanoe Falconer's art is, not the brevity of her work, but the fact that her people cannot develop on purely natural lines, because they are hampered by the terrible necessity of illustrating a moral; and even in their most unguarded moments the task assigned them is never wholly laid aside. It is seldom that a good tract is a good story too, and all the novelist's skill is powerless to impart a vivid semblance of truth to characters who have to "talk up" to a given subject, and teach a given lesson. The inartistic treatment of material results, curiously enough, in weakening our sense of reality; yet if the authoress of Cecilia de Noël would consent, for a few short years, to abandon social and spiritual problems, to concern herself as little with Ni-
