lights and shadows. Choosing a
single subject and a single class, he has elaborated it with a
truthfulness which is positively _startling_. As we often know that a
portrait is perfect from its manifest verisimilitude, so we feel from
every chapter of this book that the author has, with strictest fidelity,
adhered to real life with pre-Raphaelitic accuracy but without
pre-Raphaelitic servility to any tradition or set mannerism. The pencil
of a reporter, the lens of the photographer, are recalled by his
sketches, and not less life-like, simple and excellent are the
reflections of the business office as shown in its influence in the home
circle. The reader will recall the extraordinary popularity which
certain English romances, setting forth humble unpoetic life, have
enjoyed of late years. We refer to the _Adam Bede_ and _Silas Marner_
school of tales, in which every twig is drawn, every life-lineament set
forth with a sort of DENNER minuteness--truthful, yet constrained,
accurate but petty. In this novel, Mr. KIMBALL, while retaining all the
accuracy of _Adam Bede_, has swept more broadly and forcibly out into
life;--there are strong sorrows, great trials seen from the stand-point
of a man of the world, and a free, bold color which startles us, while
we, at the same time, recognize its reality.

The 'hero' of the work is a merchant, who, like many others after
incurring bankruptcy, takes to Wall Street--to selling notes as an
under-broker for a living. In describing his trials, the author has,
with consummate skill and extraordinary knowledge of both causes and
effects, pointed out the peculiarities, institutions, and good or bad
workings of the American mercantile system, in such a manner as to have
attracted from the soundest authority warm praise of his work, as
embodying practical knowledge of a kind seldom found in 'novels.' From
'broking' to speculating--from that again to the old course--alternately
buoyed up or cast down, through trials and troubles, the bankrupt, at
last, in his darkest hour, lands on that 'luck' which in America comes
sooner or later to every one. It is worth remarking that in all his
characters, as in his scenes, the author is careful to maintain the
balance of truth. He shows us that among the sharks and harpies of Wall
Street there are phases of honor and generosity--that the arrogance or
coldness of a bank-officer may have a rational foundation--that feelings
as intense are awakened in comm