The Sun. — 1864-08-25 (London, England)

LITERATURE.  Guilty, or Not Guilty. A Novel. By Mrs Gordon Smythies, author of " Cousin Geoffrey." Three Vols. Hurst and Blackett. It would be somewhat akin to the famous ims possibility of " breaking a butterfly upon a wheel," to subject a work of this class to the ordinary rules of criticism. As the gay orange binding which forms the external decoration of its cover is only calcue lated to please the eye and edorn the bendoiresabie, so in like manner the highly extravagant and altogether impossible marvels which it contains, told as they are in Mrs Gordon Snaythies' gay and lively manner, are only intenthd to amuse and entertain the reader. "Guilty, or Not Guilty" is just the book for the seaside and the circulating library. Fall of adventure and vicissitude, the story never fisgs ; the author never seems to grow weary; the reader is constantly amused—although occasionally the smile is raised at the expense of the fair authoress when some over-extravagant incident or description taxes the credulity of the most credulous seneatioualist. The first volume opens with a Countess of Reckalpine seated in her dressing-room. "The large oval mirror is draped with lace and muslin, and looped up with pink ribbons," &s. Mrs. Smythies is a little too land of such minutia. She not only describes a banquet but enumerates the dishes; she not only conducts us to the ball room but eeplains to us all the mysteries of the toilette of the danseuse. It ia true she excels in such descriptions, as, for example, when the fair heroine makes her debut at a'hall in Paris. We are told that the Empress's milliner and dressmaker, "the great Mdme. Beget," was consul ted. With the enthusiasm of genius she threw her whole heart and soul into Edith's ball dress"—" for Edith she was inspired." The result, of course, is mare vellous. "Nothing in such exquisite taste, so fairy-like, so aerial, so becoming, so costly, so light, so chaste, and yet so rich, had ever been seen, even in Pares No wonder that Edith, thus apparelled, is the admired of ail. Even her own mother, the haughty Lady 11a.utevi)le, who had not seen her for some years, having sent her abroad with- a chaperone for her health, does not recognise her. This amiable and noble lady and her elder daughters are accustomed, in the elegant language of Belgravie, to speak of the fair and delicate Edith as " the carrotty cripple !"—no wonder they fail to recognise her in the ball-dress of Madame Roget ! But we are talking of balls and ball-dresses, when in the volumes now beside us there is matter far more attractive. What will the novel-readers soy for the treat is store for them, when we tell them that we have here no less than two murders—two real murders—one in the first volume and one in the second ; in both of which the victims are actual lords, and for each of which an innocent man is arrested ! We have three elopements—in one instance two sisters_going off together. We have four different incarcerations of different people in a madhouse, in two of which the victims •arc perfectly in their senses, and the heroine is three times rescued from death by the hero at the peril of his life. In feet, it is almost impossible to enumerate all the marvels to he met with in these pages ; and comedy is so intermingled with the tragedies that, when Mrs. Smythies calls upon us to sympathise with a tender love scene, in which a most euphoniously-named lover whispers to his beloved, "Doesn't she see how her pour Tight-Blower loves the ground she treads on P" &e., we must confess that we feel bewildered as to whether we are expected to regard the scene as belonging to the sublime or the ridiculous! We will not spoil the mystery of the tale by any further revelation of its secrets. The three brilliant volumes—brilliant without and animated within— will wile away many an idle hour and afford no little entertainment, and let the amused reader, on concluding a perusal of the whole work, pronounce whether, in our estimate of its contents, we our. selves are "Guilty, or Not Guilty."