This novel belongs to that class which has been most in favor of late years, in which the incidents and characters are drawn from the daily life that is going on around us, and the sources of interest are sought in the acts, struggles, and sufferings of the world that lies at our feet, discarding the idealizing charm which arises from distance in space or remoteness in time. The novels of Disraeli, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Miss Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Muloch, and Miss Evans, differing as they do so widely in style, treatment, and spirit, all come under this general division. Fictitious compositions of this class have difficulties peculiar to themselves, but success, when attained, is proportionally great; and from the sympathetic element in man they can secure the interest of their readers, though their plots may be improbable and their characters unnatural. The scene of "Ravenshoe" is laid in England, the time is the present, and the men and women are such as may be seen at a flower-show at Chiswick or on the race-course at Epsom on a Derby day. The plot is ingenious, thickly strewn with sudden and startling incidents, though very improbable; but the story flows on in so rapid and animated a current that the reader can never pause long enough for criticism, and it is not till he lays the volume down, and recalls the ground he has been over, that he has leisure to remark that the close has been reached by such stepping-stones as are never laid down in the path of real life. The characters are various, drawn with the greatest spirit, but not all of them natural. Lord Saltire, for instance, is a portrait with which the author has evidently taken much pains; but the elements we see in him are such as never were, never could be, combined in any living and breathing man. Father Mackworth is elaborately drawn, but the sketch wants vitality and unity. Adelaide and Ellen present essentially the same type, modified by difference of position and circumstances, and, in the latter, by the infusion of a fanatical religious element. Charles Ravenshoe, the hero, is well conceived and consistently carried; and the same may be said of Cuthbert. But the best character in the book is old Lady Ascot. She is quite original, and yet quite natural; and we guess that some of her peculiarities are drawn from life.