Mr. J. A. Trollope has returned to the scenes of his first love--to Italian skies, artists, maidens, marchesi, and friars. We are plunged at once into the hot sunshine and tropical excitements of a Ravennese Carnival. The author gives us exuberant descriptions of female beauty, of fastidious adornment, dexterous _deshabille motivée_, and of fierce sexual passion met by cold calculating resolve to play a high stake without love, or faithfulness, or even wisdom. Mr. Trollope is matchless in his portraiture of Italian _artistes_, and of the simple _contadina_ of refined and delicate taste, and pure seraphic devotion to the one over-mastering affection. He has, in this story, contrasted the natures of two beautiful portionless girls, who by strange fortune are thrown, during the same carnival, into the way of the two Marchesi Castelmare. The one is an opera singer, the other a painter. The former resolves on making a conquest of the elder nobleman, and the latter does win the affections of the younger. The uncle is described as the pattern of the highest virtue, of stone-cold passions, of infinite proprieties; and La Lalli, the syren, succeeds during the carnival in bewitching, maddening, and befooling him into promise of marriage, and inspiring the most deadly jealousy of any interference with his claim. A noble nature is ruined by the fierce fires of a foolish attachment, and most tragic are the issues. We will not diminish the fascination of the story by revealing its secret. _La diva Lalli_ is actually murdered on the very day when the old marchese has publicly admitted his intention to marry her, and everybody but the murderer seems to have run the risk of having to bear the brunt of the charge. More than a volume is occupied with an endeavour to answer the question, 'Who has done the deed?' There is more delicacy, and subtlety, and meaning in the inquiry, than in the inquiry, 'Who killed Tulkinghorn?' and the reader is reminded of the heart-searching of Mr. Browning's 'Ring and Book,' rather than of Mr. Dickens's popular story. The story cannot be called pleasing or profitable. It is a wonderful drawing, full of brilliant effects, and crowded with narrative and suggestion. The style is clear, and the Italian expletives and appellatives give it an operatic grace and sweetness that are very attractive. If '_tesoro mio_' had been translated 'duck of diamonds,' and the rest of the prettiness turned into plain English, perhaps the blue sky and the _circolo_ and the _carnival_ would have had to vanish likewise. _Against Time._ By ALEXANDER INNES SHAND. Two vols. Smith, Elder and Co. 1870.