inning of
the second volume. Mr. Linden's acquirements are to receive peculiar
lustre from a triumph over no ordinary competitor,--over the
intelligent and well-read Doctor Harrison. Naturally, we expect
something recondite, and are by no means satisfied with the trite

"Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses," etc.

Mr. Linden might as well have astonished the company by such a
transcendent proof of erudition as

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women," etc.

Or, passing "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," (for novelty
in quotations we find to be contagious,) have recounted the wildly
erratic history "of that false matron known in nursery rhyme,
Insidious Morey," or quoted

"How doth the little busy bee."

After which he might have soared into unapproachable heights of
surpassing literary erudition, by informing his awe-struck hearers
that the latter poem was written by Doctor Watts! The fact is, any
attempt to give the novelist's characters a learning which the
novelist does not possess is always hazardous.

The Heroine, Miss Faith Derrick, is a pretty, but not remarkably
original creation, who taxes our magnanimity sorely at times by her
blind admiration of her lover when he is peculiarly absurd, but whose
dumb rejection of Doctor Harrison, though a trifle theatrical, is
really charming. Faith is better than Linden: Linden is _"superbe,
magnifique"_; but Faith is "pretty good."

But the conception of the Villain is very fine. In Doctor Harrison we
hail a new development of that indispensable character. Of course,
the gentlemanly, good-humored Doctor is not to be considered a
villain in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is only a
technical villain,--a villain of eminent respectability. It is almost
unnecessary to add, that he is immeasurably more attractive than the
real hero, Mr. Linden.

We regret to say that the conception is not carried out so well as it
deserves to be. Doctor Harrison descends to some low business, quite
unworthy of him, such as tampering with the mails. This is not only
mortifying, but entirely unnecessary; inasmuch as Doctor Harrison has
a subordinate villain to do all the low villany, in the person of
Squire Deacon, who shoots at Mr. Linden from behind a hedge (!), and
is never called to account therefor,--a strange remissness on the
part of everybody, which seems to have no recommendation except that
it leaves him free to do th