elow_.'"

We are not surprised to learn that the mother of this infant phenomenon,
who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those of adolescence repressed
by gin, is herself a phoenix. We are assured, again and again, that she
had a remarkably original in mind, that she was a genius, and "conscious
of her originality," and she was fortunate enough to have a lover who was
also a genius and a man of "most original mind."

This lover, we read, though "wonderfully similar" to her "in powers and
capacity," was "infinitely superior to her in faith and development," and
she saw in him "'Agape'--so rare to find--of which she had read and
admired the meaning in her Greek Testament; having, _from her great
facility in learning languages_, read the Scriptures in their original
_tongues_." Of course! Greek and Hebrew are mere play to a heroine;
Sanscrit is no more than _a_ _b_ _c_ to her; and she can talk with
perfect correctness in any language, except English. She is a polking
polyglot, a Creuzer in crinoline. Poor men. There are so few of you who
know even Hebrew; you think it something to boast of if, like
Bolingbroke, you only "understand that sort of learning and what is writ
about it;" and you are perhaps adoring women who can think slightingly of
you in all the Semitic languages successively. But, then, as we are
almost invariably told that a heroine has a "beautifully small head," and
as her intellect has probably been early invigorated by an attention to
costume and deportment, we may conclude that she can pick up the Oriental
tongues, to say nothing of their dialects, with the same aerial facility
that the butterfly sips nectar. Besides, there can be no difficulty in
conceiving the depth of the heroine's erudition when that of the
authoress is so evident.

In "Laura Gay," another novel of the same school, the heroine seems less
at home in Greek and Hebrew but she makes up for the deficiency by a
quite playful familiarity with the Latin classics--with the "dear old
Virgil," "the graceful Horace, the humane Cicero, and the pleasant Livy;"
indeed, it is such a matter of course with her to quote Latin that she
does it at a picnic in a very mixed company of ladies and gentlemen,
having, we are told, "no conception that the nobler sex were capable of
jealousy on this subject. And if, indeed," continues the biographer of
Laura Gray, "the wisest and noblest portion of that sex were in the
majority, no such sentiment w