, Captain Dodd was as likely to turn up on
that as on any other, the purser as likely to make his communication at
that moment as later, and the fly as likely to resuscitate the patient
as the surgeon. But the characterization in this book is wonderful;
every name becomes an acquaintance, from Mrs. Beresford, dividing Ajax's
emotion and declining to be drowned in the dark, with her servant
Ramgolam and his matchless Orientalisms, up to the loftier models, one
of whom he endows with this exquisite bit of description:--

"A head overflowed by ripples of dark-brown hair sat with heroic
grace upon his solid white throat, like some glossy falcon
new-lighted on a Parian column."

We must, however, object to Fullalove, who is quite unworthy of the
author, though perhaps complacently regarded by him as a success, being
merely the traditional Yankee compound of patents and conjectures, a
little smarter than usual, as of course a passage through Mr. Reade's
pen must make him;--he never touched his brain. Vespasian, also, is not
so good as he might be, although one enjoys his contempt for the
pirate's crew of Papuans, Sooloos, and Portuguese, as a "mixellaneous
bilin' of darkies," and finds something inimitable in his injured
dignity over the anomalous _sobriquet_ afforded him, whose changes he
rings through analogy and anatomy till he declares himself to be only a
"darned anemone." The real charm of the book, however, lies in the
beautiful relation which it pictures between mother and children, and in
the nature of the daughter herself, so exuberant, so dancing, yet the
foam subsiding into such a luminous body of clearness, which so lights
up the page with its loveliness, that, seeing how an artless woman is
foreign to Mr. Reade's ideas, we are forced to believe that Nature was
too strong for him and he wrote against the grain. Nevertheless, there
is enough of his own prejudice retained for piquancy,--and since the
poor things must be insignificantly wicked, see how charming they can
be! There are many scenes between these covers that would well bear
repetition, were they not too fresh in the reader's mind to require it;
we will content ourselves with a single one, which contains the only
pretentious writing of the whole novel, done at a touch, with a light,
loose pen, but showing beyond compare the soul of the poet through the
flesh of the novelist.

"At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and the