A young curate gains the trust of various of his parishioners.
For Aïdé, see Novels 076 and 176.
“The book is decidedly both good and interesting. The drawing-room conversation and small-talk of a country town are well given, as far as the dialogue is concerned; while the incidents are natural and the characters well sustained. There are touches of pathos here and there, which we must rank with a higher style of composition than that usually attained in works of this class.” New Quarterly Review, April, 1859
“The best idea we can give the reader of the work before us, is to suppose the celebrated philosopher in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World transformed into” its narrator. “As he is a man of vast sympathies, very enlightened views, and a great love for his kind, and having withal peculiar facilities from his position for studying character, it may be imagined that his letters are pregnant with philosophical reflections on modern society. . . . ‘Confidences’ is written in the most pleasing manner of any novel we have read for years past.” Leader and Saturday Analyst, June 11, 1859
A contrasting view:
“These ‘Confidences’ are of the mildest interest. If we were ill-natured, we should call them insipid. The style is pleasant and well bred, but the matter in hand has neither bone nor muscle. The story, if story it may be called, is rambling gossip about a small parish. . . . There is no precision of touch in either the dialogue or description, whether of people or their belongings. There is a rather pleasant flavour in its gentle dullness, but the ‘Confidences’ were not worth making.” Athenaeum, July 9, 1859
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