"Sublime silliness"

Victorian publishers' in-house magazines were notorious for puffing their own merchandise, so the following is an interesting case of Saunders, Otley & Co.'s review, The Literary Budget, biting down hard on the hand that fed it.  As I've noted before, despite the popularity of controversial fiction, many nineteenth-century readers found it a rather appalling genre:

Soon Over. 10s. 6d. (Saunders, Otley & Co.) The family of a Somersetshire rector go to live abroad. Many attempts are made by Roman Catholic Priests to pervert them, but all fail. All the young people turn out remarkably well, and are indeed rather painfully pious. The only interesting incident in the book, is when a little girl drops a feather bed out of window on the heads of her grandfather and grandmother; and this young lady becomes profoundly penitent immediately afterwards. Novels that turn upon religious controversy are objectionable, even when written by those who understand their subject; but Soon Over treats the questions at issue between the Churches of Rome and England with a kind of sublime silliness. An English schoolboy of ten is made victorious in argument over the most sagacious of Catholic priests. The author is evidently a very good young lady, but she knows nothing of theology, and requires more experience before she writes another novel.