the sketches of the three old ladies who
preside over the select seminary are very amusing. Dorinda is not very
popular, and grave suspicions rest upon her of having stolen a cheque.
This is a startling debut for a heroine, and I was a little afraid at
first that Dorinda, after undergoing endless humiliations, would be
proved innocent in the last chapter. It was quite a relief to find that
Dorinda was guilty. In fact, Dorinda is a kleptomaniac; that is to say,
she is a member of the upper classes who spends her time in collecting
works of art that do not belong to her. This, however, is only one of
her accomplishments, and it does not occupy any important place in the
story till the last volume is reached. Here we find Dorinda married to a
Styrian Prince, and living in the luxury for which she had always longed.
Unfortunately, while staying in the house of a friend she is detected
stealing some rare enamels. Her punishment, as described by Lady
Munster, is extremely severe; and when she finally commits suicide,
maddened by the imprisonment to which her husband had subjected her, it
is difficult not to feel a good deal of pity for her. Lady Munster
writes a very clever, bright style, and has a wonderful faculty of
drawing in a few sentences the most lifelike portraits of social types
and social exceptions. Sir Jasper Broke and his sister, the Duke and
Duchess of Cheviotdale, Lord and Lady Glenalmond, and Lord Baltimore, are
all admirably drawn. The 'novel of high life,' as it used to be called,
has of late years fallen into disrepute. Instead of duchesses in
Mayfair, we have philanthropic young ladies in Whitechapel; and the
fashionable and brilliant young dandies, in whom Disraeli and Bulwer
Lytton took such delight, have been entirely wiped out as heroes of
fiction by hardworking curates in the East End. The aim of most of our
modern novelists seems to be, not to write good novels, but to write
novels that will do good; and I am afraid that they are under the
impression that fashionable life is not an edifying subject. They wish
to reform the morals, rather than to portray the manners of their age.
They have made the novel the mode of propaganda. It is possible,
however, that Dorinda points to some coming change, and certainly it
would be a pity if the Muse of Fiction confined her attention entirely to
the East End.

* * * * *

The four remarkable women whom Mrs. Walford has chosen as the subjects of
her