REVIEWS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10601, 9 March 1895, Page 6

REVIEWS .

“Peter Ibhetson,” edited by George Du Maurier. London: Macmillan and Co. Christchurch: Fountain Some books come to us like the first bright day in spring. They char n away all memory of the heavy and orea_v end commonplace, and beguile us it to finding ; the beauty that hides down in th < h“srt of the stale old world. To beebme a cuild ; again, to feel with all the child s trash , keenness of perception, to return once ; more into the wonder palace of faeries’tha,.* is part of our youth—this ie_ what “ 1 eter Ibhetson” does for us, with the exiu that belongs to its author Du Maurier revels iu a sweet simplicity or language and a na'ivctd that is doubtless owing to his French origin. From this also comes the lightness and freshness Ol tha narrative, for novel it can scarcely be called. -The pathos of Peter Ibhetsonß life is undeniable, but it is too delicately expressed for heaviness. For the rest, > some readers might bo inclined to quarrel , with the length of the slightly drawn-out conclusion, but that is, after all, a mere matter of taste. In presenting this unique atory of the perfect attachment of a man and woman to each other, in spite of peculiar obstacles, our author has, at the same time, dealt with the moat advanced ideas on heredity M as with the phenomena of dreams, unconscious memory, sub-consciousness, jand, withal, has kept alive our interest’/in these abstractions. The book purposes to be, the memoir of Peter Ibhetson, written in gaol when undergoing a life sentence fior murdering his uncle under terrible provocation. The strangest part of the rnemow is the dream life, by means of which Peter to enjoy the friendship of the playmate of bis youth, who had now become the novjle Duchess of Towers. For twenty-five years’., until her death, this friendship sweetened the lives of the solitary prisoner in his cell, and of the beautiful lady who devoted her waking existence to charitable work among the poor of London. It would be useless to attempt to indicate the plan of the book, which would thereby lose much of its charm ; how Mary was enabled to live one half of her life in dreams, in which Peter, the friend of her childhood, had equal share; how they travelled together over the world, tasting tho moat intellectual delights that wealth and taste can bestow; how in the dual life they each lived, that given up to each other seemed more real and tangible than the commonplace waking existence. All this must be read in the book itself, which, though peculiar, has a fascination of its own, while the illustrations from tha author’s well-known pencil add to its interest. More than this, its tone is elevating and refining throughout, qualities thati unhappily do not belong to many fashionable books of the day. “ A Group of Noble Dames,” by Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan and Co. Christchurch: Fountain Barber. Although our author, is undoubtedly happiest in hia longer novels, this collection of .short stories contains many of his best characteristics. As might be expected in a volume of this kind, the descriptions of nature in which Hardy is generally so happy are ruthlessly omitted, and tho love teles of the ten noblo ladies are chronicled with a severe simplicity of diction that is very refreshing. Moreover, the time at which they lived—the beginning of the present century with ita picturesque atmosphere—lends itself adi mirably to this treatment. Tho episodes are uneventful, but romantic enough, and under the author’s sympathetic pen they acquire a reality which becomes their chief charm. Perhaps the best, where all are good, is the story of “ The First Countess of Wessex, told by the Local Historian,” while that of the Lady Penelope has a charm all its own.