-spinners and railway speculators and angry protectionists; we do
not say which state of things is best or worst, we desire merely to
account for what may be called the taste for _heroic_ literature at that
time, and the taste for--we really hardly know what to call
it--literature of the present, made up, as it too generally is, of
shreds and patches--bits of gold and bits of tinsel--things written in a
hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward--suggestive
rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too
great proneness to underrate what our fathers probably overrated.

At all events we must bear in mind, while reading or thinking over Miss
Porter's novels, that, in her day, even the exaggeration of enthusiasm
was considered good tone and good taste. How this enthusiasm was
_fostered_, not subdued, can be gathered by the author's ingenious
preface to the, we believe, tenth edition of "Thaddeus of Warsaw."

This story brought her abundant honors, and rendered her society, as
well as the society of her sister and brother, sought for by all who
aimed at a reputation for taste and talent. Mrs. Porter, on her
husband's death (he was the younger son of a well-connected Irish
family, born in Ireland, in or near Coleraine, we believe, and a major
in the Enniskillen dragoons), sought a residence for her family in
Edinburgh, where education and good society are attainable to persons of
moderate fortunes, if they are "well born;" but the extraordinary
artistic skill of her son Robert required a wider field, and she brought
her children to London sooner than she had intended, that his promising
talents might be cultivated. We believe the greater part of "Thaddeus of
Warsaw" was written in London, either in St. Martin's-lane,
Newport-street, or Gerard-street, Soho (for in these three streets the
family lived after their arrival in the metropolis); though as soon as
Robert Ker Porter's abilities floated him on the stream, his mother and
sisters retired, in the brightness of their fame and beauty, to the
village of Thames Ditton, a residence they loved to speak of as their
"home." The actual labor of "Thaddeus"--her first novel--must have been
considerable; for testimony was frequently borne to the fidelity of its
localities, and Poles refused to believe that the author had not visited
Poland; indeed, she had a happy power in describing localities.

It was on the publication of Miss Porter's tw