The deficiency of which the reader is most often conscious in endeavouring to make a general estimate of Mrs. Praed's work is a want of breadth in her scope--a presentation too constant and too tense of certain phases of the passionate life of men and women, to the comparative exclusion of those softer and higher attributes which even Charlotte Brontë (whose touch that of Mrs. Praed occasionally resembles) did not neglect. In other words, we are not given enough to admire. There are few pictures--and none that can be called memorable--of happy married life to contrast with the vivid tragedies of mistaken unions. An inclination towards humorous disdain characterizes the references in the stories to conjugal relations of the ordinarily satisfactory kind. And when those of a filial nature are brought into prominence, they, too, often have only a pathetic or painful aspect--love on the one side repelled by indifference; an uncouth parent offering rough sympathy that irritates instead of soothes; a sensitive girl writhing under the brutalities or _gaucheries_ of a drunken father. A survey of the author's female characters will recall over a score of names of discontented girls experimenting in life--flirts, minxes, unhappy wives, and shallow society women; while after passing over half a dozen of the _ingénue_, the amusing and the neutral types, there remain only about four to represent the highest and most lovable qualities of womanhood. A similar division might be made between the male characters, though here the preponderance of the bad would not be so great as in the first case.