MISS BRADDoN'S LAST NOVEL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 58, 11 March 1869, Page 2

MISS BRADDoN'S LAST NOVEL.

, The Saturday Review has the following severe critique on Miss Bratidon's. last novel, "Run to. Earth: 1 ' — This is Miss Braddon's idea of the events which touch the symyathy and experience of millions. A story filled from end to end with murder aud attempts to murder, with suicides, abductions, consecration to revenge (and nothing coming of it), with bribery, disguises, and every kind of rascality, redeemed — it indeed it can be called redeemed — by the presence of a pure and noble minded adventuress, who keeps a gaming table where pigeons are plucked, yet who is a human lily nevertheless, and by*a queenly street-singer who has had her sole experience of life araong thieves and sailors at Wapping, yet who is as perfectly well-bred as if she had been brought up at Court, and as pure as if she had never been outside the walls of a nunnery — this is the kind of thing which Miss Braddon puts forth as a picture of human life. " Run to Earth 'is decidedly the worst book she has ever produced. She may be able to touch a lower level still, for all things are possible to genius ; and her genius for coarse sensationalism, her power for raking together moral garbage, and her capacity for dealing with the back slums of human nature, may have still undeveloped potentialities which shall one day startle the world with the spectacle of how low a clever writer can descend. Her style, too, has deteriorated, and the whole book bears the unmistakeable stamp of "copy waited for." It is wild, hurried, coarsei and yet wooden. There is no grace or play of fancy in it, no plastic power of passion; it is like a collection of grim and ugly New Zealand idols cut hurriedly and coarsely, and after well-worn types, among which are set one or two staring painted dolls that do duty for beautiful idols, also modelled after well-known types. It is a book to give cause of rejoicing to the enemies of sensationalism, for it is so undeniably poor and bad that even the partisans of the school cannot praise it, while it will disgust many waverers, and confirm those who are only half hearted opponents.

Cabtes de Visite Bound to Fade. — Many very respectable photographic journals have risen and kept pace with the progress of the science which, with all its popularity, has at present a canker worm of rottenness in its art, a drawback not so thoroughly known as it ought to be to the general public — a sham which requires plenty of ventilation at the hands of the press. Sad to relate, the votaries of the sun, who derive wealth and prosperity from his rays, have been for too many years supplying the public with moonshine, and it is high time that the general public began to sound an alarm da the sleeping camp of the photographers. The pictures on albumenised paper, which meet our eyes at every turn, will all fade. The much treasured photographs in the family album, the larger pictures which, in the dignity of frames, adorn the wall, will all alike vanish from our gaze, it may be ten, twenty, or even fifty years, yet fade they •must. The editors of the photographic journals acknowledge the fact, and the pagesof theirperiodicals frequently contain ■articles proposing remedies for the evil. — Engineer. The Leader speaking of the Victorian ■squatters, says : — Verily they have their own troubles now. Scab, fluke, footrot, popular ministries, drought, free-grass, no grass, land selection, forty-second clause, fencings, falls in wool, auriferous reserves, soured bankers, bush fires, insolvency commissioners, goldfields, commons, poundkeepers, inquisitive creditors, makes up such a catalogue of woe as never afflicted flockowners since Job lost seven thousand ■sheep by fire. By Heathcote- there is a station which John Hunter Patterson once sold at about twenty-seven shillings per head ; this changed hands during the last few days with' 12,00.0 sheep, for £1750 (less than 3s. per head), the last owners having dropped about £] 7,000 by their venture. A correspondent communicates to the Australasian a simple but efficacious plan of keeping down the plague of grasshoppers. He says: — " I see that the grasshoppers are committing great depredations in various parts of the colony, and as I know a simple way of- destroying them when they do come, which I have practised in South Australia for years (where in some seasons clouds of grasshoppers come as thick as flakes of snow in a snow- storm). I send it to your valuable paper, as it may be of great use to gardeners and others who suffer most by their visitations. The plan is to sow borders or rows of the common larkspur in gardens; iv vineyards it might be sown between the vines. The ■. •larkspur has a very pretty flower, and the leaf is so green that it attracts the grasshoppers at once, and when eaten is sudden death to them. I have seen them lying dead by thousands under the larkspur borders in the gardens in Adelaide." A writer dwelliug upon the importance of small things, says, "that he always takes ■notice, even of a straw, especially if there happen to be a sherry cobbler at the end of it."