A MODERN NOVEL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3057, 13 April 1881, Page 2

A MODERN NOVEL.

The following extract from a review of a modern novel that appeared recently in a London paper gives a good idea of the kind of writing that lovers of this sort of literature appreciate : —" You will do that for me, Thomas," said a beautiful woman, "as she leaned for a moment against a massive table, with its mahogany legs " —the italics are our own but the curious feat of leaning with mahogany legs against a table is the invention of the authoress who calls herself a table. Thomas was the beautiful and mahogany-legged lady's handsome footman. " She smiled, whilst her eyes rested on him for a moment: and the blood flowed full andstrongin the fair woman's lips as they parted ; her breath fanned his cheek. . . The man turned from her with a strange A smile of happiness upon his face. c The fool!' muttered the lady, as she placed both hands upon her waist and turning to the long looking-glass which stood between the well-stored book-cases at the far end of the but-little-frequented library, smiled gladly, as she said aloud in the same soft voice, " I as fair. That glass is not a man, that it can flatter. I like my figure. No wonder I can fool most men." . . . Then

she returned to the library and rang the bell. A youth about seventeen years of ago answered. Comely, well-knit, active, once a boy about the stables, he had been by her choice promoted to be her page . . . ,\ She laid her hand on the youth's shoulder!* To his cheek, too, the blood came redly, and his eyes brightened, as he answered in welldrilled accents, "Yes, my lady." "Do not wait," she said, as she saw the boy pausing for a moment; and then, with a sudden movement of her hand, as though by chance it touched a lock of his hair which strayed upon his forehead. The boy turned, and withdrew with a look of happiness upon his ' face. Again the lady smiled as she left the room." But we must refer to " Whom did she Love ?" itself for the curious reader who would fain know more of the doings of this mahogany-legged Messalina. We have been \ driven to make a random quotation to do duty for criticism, because the novel from which it was taken baffles our comprehension. The whole novel may be as good as the quoted sample for aught we can tell. Worse, most assuredly, it can hardly be.

Our general impression is that nothing Billier than "Whom did she Love?" has ever been writtan even by a novelist—and that, alas ! is saying a great deal indeed.