Her suggestion is that houses should be opened for
the young and high-caste child-widows, where they can take shelter
without the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in their
religious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action as
regards caste rules. The whole account given by the Pundita of the life
of the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the social
reformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfully
well written, is likely to produce a radical change in the educational
schemes that at present prevail in India.

(1) Venetia Victrix. By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co.)

(2) Darwinism and Politics. By David Ritchie, Jesus College, Oxford.
(Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)

(3) The High-Caste Hindu Woman. By the Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati. (Bell
and Sons.)

OUIDA'S NEW NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 17, 1889.)

Ouida is the last of the romantics. She belongs to the school of Bulwer
Lytton and George Sand, though she may lack the learning of the one and
the sincerity of the other. She tries to make passion, imagination, and
poetry part of fiction. She still believes in heroes and in heroines.
She is florid and fervent and fanciful. Yet even she, the high priestess
of the impossible, is affected by her age. Her last book, Guilderoy as
she calls it, is an elaborate psychological study of modern temperaments.
For her, it is realistic, and she has certainly caught much of the tone
and temper of the society of our day. Her people move with ease and
grace and indolence. The book may be described as a study of the peerage
from a poetical point of view. Those who are tired of mediocre young
curates who have doubts, of serious young ladies who have missions, and
of the ordinary figureheads of most of the English fiction of our time,
might turn with pleasure, if not with profit, to this amazing romance. It
is a resplendent picture of our aristocracy. No expense has been spared
in gilding. For the comparatively small sum of 1 pound, 11s. 6d. one is
introduced to the best society. The central figures are exaggerated, but
the background is admirable. In spite of everything, it gives one a
sense of something like life.

What is the story? Well, we must admit that we have a faint suspicion
that Ouida has told it to us before. Lord Guilderoy, 'whose name was as
old as the days of Knut,' falls madly in love, or fancies that he falls
madly in love, with a rustic Perdita, a provincial Artemis who has 'a
Gainsborough face, with wide-opened questioning eyes and tumbled auburn
hair.' She is poor but well-born, being the only child of Mr. Vernon of
Llanarth, a curious recluse, who is half a pedant and half Don Quixote.
Guilderoy marries her and, tiring of her shyness, her lack of power to
express herself, her want of knowledge of fashionable life, returns to an
old passion for a wonderful creature called the Duchess of Soria. Lady
Guilderoy becomes ice; the Duchess becomes fire; at the end of the book
Guilderoy is a pitiable object. He has to submit to be forgiven by one
woman, and to endure to be forgotten by the other. He is thoroughly
weak, thoroughly worthless, and the most fascinating person in the whole
story. Then there is his sister Lady Sunbury, who is very anxious for
Guilderoy to marry, and is quite determined to hate his wife.