and months a lodging-house life is very miserable: it
benumbs the best of our faculties; the edge of enjoyment is blunted.
Music is sweeter within the compass of your own walls; the book is
pleasanter taken from the familiar shelf of your own library; in one's
own studio the habit of happy occupation has made an atmosphere that
has a charm in it."

Gifted with a rare variety of talents, Lover heartily enjoyed the
exercise of each, and found his chief pleasure in their development. He
worked incessantly at painting, writing or musical composition--worked
for love of the work, not from uneasy effort or outside pressure. In
this respect he presents a happy contrast to his fellow-countryman and
brother-humorist Charles Lever, whose biography, published some months
ago, left a painful impression on the mind in its view of a man of
genuine talent and attractive qualities living in a feverish way and
writing constantly against his inclination, too often below his powers.
As writers the two stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of
talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the
most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he
might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had
an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they
show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his
facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the
book before us in praise of a friend and physician:

Whene'er your vitality
Is feeble in quality,
And you fear a fatality
May end the strife,
Then Dr. Joe Dickson
Is the man I would fix on
For putting new wicks on
The lamp of life.

In his stories Lover relied less on drollery of incident and indulged
more in play upon words than Lever, but the humor of both is
essentially of the same kind and drawn from the same source. Compared
with much of our American humor, it has a spontaneousness, and above
all a lovable quality, that ours lacks. The boy who has laughed over
_Lorrequer_ and _Handy Andy_ is apt to look back at them not merely
with amusement, but with a feeling of _camaraderie_ and even
tenderness. He has laughed with them as well as at them--has somehow
gained through the laughter a glimpse of the writer which inspires
liking and respect.

New England Bygones. By E.H. Arr. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

E.H. Arr has produced a very pleas