SOURCE: “Review of ‘The Hillyars and Burtons’,” in North American Review, Vol. 101, July, 1865, pp. 293–99.

In the following anonymous review, the critic denounces The Hillyars and Burtons as illogical.

“The old question between love and duty,” says the author in his Preface, “I have in this story used all my best art in putting before the reader.” A bad best, we are constrained to say, Mr. Kingsley's best art seems to be.

It is true that, like most other problems given us to solve in this world, the problem of love and duty is so difficult, and so overlaid by confusing circumstances, that we go wrong oftener than right, and as men and women we do little more than repeat in a larger school our experience as children, when, after long puzzling over our sums, we used to work back from the right answer, and discover too late when...