But, as the old gentleman in the
brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She
should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial
she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her
death.

COULTER'S CRUISE.[14]

Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of
water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to
Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written,
free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the
countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have
had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr
Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would
have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat
sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the
difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous
competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After
the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able
seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat
and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. OMOO
would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had
combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean
during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's
book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr
Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without
interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we
would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes--rarely,
it is true--meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn,
so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress
us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had
being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their
creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We
should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such
persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an
imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a
poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous
idiot,