on business pursuits as in the most
dramatic and erratic lives. In this _just_ treatment of character,--this
avoiding of the old saint and angel system of depicting men,--KIMBALL is
truly pre-eminent, and under it even the casual SOL DOWNER strikes us
with an individuality and a force not inferior to that of the hero
himself.

We can not take leave of this truly remarkable book without referring to
the under-current of kindly, humane feelings with which it abounds.
There is a delicate, tremulous sympathy for the sufferings and joys
which he depicts, which reflects the highest credit on the author. There
are, in this book, unaffected touches of pathos, founded on the most
natural events in the world, which have never been surpassed by any
novelist.

We are glad that novelists are leaving romance and going to real life.
One breaking into the harsh industry of the factory and market, another
taking down the joys and sorrows of the humble weaver, another
describing, as in this work, the strange hurrying life of the 'outside
broker' to the sharpest-cut detail,--all giving us truth and observation
in the place of vague imagination;--such are the best results of late
literature; and prominent among these the future historian will place
the Under-currents of Wall Street.

MARGARET HOWTH. A Story of To-Day. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

We know of no other truly American novel into which so many elements
have been forced by the strength of genius into harmony, as in _Margaret
Howth_. One may believe, in reading it, that the author, wearied of the
old cry that the literature of our country is only a continuation of
that of Europe, had resolved to prove, by vigorous effort, that it _is_
possible to set forth, not merely the incidents of our industrial life
in many grades, in its purely idiomatic force, but to make the world
realize that in it vibrate and struggle outward those aspirations, germs
of culture and reforms which we seldom reflect on as forming a part of
the inner-being of our very practical fellow-citizens. The work has two
characteristics,--it breaks, with a strong intellect and fine
descriptive power, into a new field, right into the rough of real life,
bringing out fresher and more varied forms than had been done before,
and in doing this makes us understand, with strange ability, how the
thinkers among our people _think_. We all know how it flows _in_ to
them, from lecture and book, from the _Tribune_ and