of both of them,
is now going the round of the gossipping circles. 'Do you like HALEVY, the
author?' inquired a friend. '_Pas du tout, pas du tout!_' answered the
lady; 'He is as dull as if his brother had composed him!' EUGENE SUE has
hatched a large brood of 'Mysteries.' The _Journal des Debats_ having
published 'Mysteries of Paris,' the _Courier Francais_ is now publishing
the 'Mysteries of London.' At Berlin no less than four different authors
have published its 'Mysteries.' The 'Mysteries of Brussels' are being
detailed in one of its journals. The 'Mysteries of Hamburg' have been
exposed in print. At Vienna they are giving the 'Mysteries of
Constantinople;' and a Paris newspaper promises in a short time the
'Mysteries of St. Petersburg.' Going on at this rate, there will soon be
no 'Mysteries' in the world, and even the very word will become obsolete.'
. . . '_The God of our Idolatry_' contains some home-thrusts at the
national love of money, and not a few just animadversions upon the
standard of respectability which obtains, in certain quarters, among us.
HAMILTON and BASIL HALL'S experience in this regard seems also to have
been that of our correspondent. The tendency of this standard, in a social
and intellectual point of view, is very far from elevating. 'You are going
to the dinner at ----'s to-day, of course,' said a lady with 'an eye to
the main chance' to a friend of ours, the other day; 'the company will be
composed of some of our most 'fore-handed citizens--all _heavy men_,' Our
friend _did_ go to the dinner; and he found the guests as 'heavy' as their
best friends could have wished them to be. . . . READING, in presence of a
travelled friend, the proof of the admirable paper which opens the present
number, we came to the passage which records the opinion of KEPLER, that
'the world is a vast animal, that breathes and reasons;' whereupon our
listener remarked: 'No doubt of it; it _is_ an animal; I've seen its
four-quarters myself!' It was a pun worthy of a butcher. . . . WE are not
so _certain_ that the moral of '_The Independent Man_' is 'an
unexceptionable one.' The 'Charcoal-sketcher' expresses the general
opinion, we fear, in this regard: 'There's a double set of principles in
this world, one of which is to talk about and the other to act upon; one
is preached and the other is practised. You've got hold, somehow, of the
wrong set; the set invented by the knowing ones to check competition and
to secure al