The Sun. — 1867-05-20 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  Idols of Clay. By Mrs. Gordon Smythies. 3 vole, Saunders and Utley.  Mrs. Gordon Smythies has been very felicitous in the choice of a subject for her new novel. The name in itself is singularly suggestive ; it is at once a romance and a sermon. The words of Mrs. Italians' beautiful poem are familiar to us all. When contemplating a group of school-girls at their evening devotions, she tenderly exhorts them to pray before the sorrows of the future life come upon them, foretelling for some among them the fate of so many of their sex-"to make idols and to find them clay, And to bewail that worship—therefore pray."  Idolators of this unhappy class are the chief heroes and heroines of Mrs. Gordon Sinythies' novel. In the case of the heroine, the very charming and loveable Belinda de la Tour, the recognition of the worthlessness of the idol of her devotion effects the happy cure for her idolatry, and she finds a worthier object for her best affections. The story is full of incidents and adventures, many of which are startling and improbable ; but readers who take up a novel to find amusement for a leisure hour, may find a pleasing interest in its pages, while the moral lesson which it conveys is to many the lesson of life. Stella Thornhill is another of those female fiends so frequently to be met with in the pages of modern romance. She, too, has her idol, and also her idolator. So extravagant is the passion which Eche entertains for the one and which she inspires in the other, that before the commencement of the story we are told that, in a fit of despair at the coldness of her idol, she had attempted to destroy herself, and had inflicted a wound upon her throat, when the knife was wrenched' from her hand by her devoted idolator, who, being discovered at the moment, was arrested as a would-be murderer, and tried and transported for the supposed crime, his idol of clay never uttering a word in his defence. This one incident will convey a better idea of the sensational character of the tale than any comments which we could bestow upon it. Mrs. Smythies is not only possessed of a very vivid imagination, but of very considerable courage, both very requisite qualifications for the authors of sensational romance.  DEBRETT'S ILLUSTRATED HOUSE OF COMMONS forms a most acceptable companion volume to the world-famous " Peerage " and " Baronetage." Compiled and edited (evidently with great care) by Mr. R. H. Mair, the volume, which extends to upwards of 400 pages, has boen issued from the press by the well-known publishers of Debrett, the Messrs. Dean and Son, of Ludgate-hill. In noticing the work, immediately upon its first appearance a short time since, the Spectator facetiously directed attention to the whimsical coincidence that Mr. Bright's crest is rather appropriately a dragon's head vomiting flames of fire. A rather important word, however, in the heraldric description of this crest was omitted by our contemporary, who ought to have added that the dragon's head was a dragon's head collared.  " ECHOES FROM THE CLUBS" began last week as a Sixpenny Serial, consisting chiefly of agreeable gossip from Pall-Mall and other favourite regions of Clubland, the day fixed for the publication of Echoes from the Clubs being Wednesday. The notion of a periodical of this kind is excellent in itself, and so far as we can in any way judge from a first number it gives promise of being admirably well carried out by its projectors.