A number of military novels and memoirs of eminent commanders have been written by Mr JAMES GRANT (born in Edinburgh in 1822), and who served for a short time in the 62d regiment. Among these are, The Romance of War, 1846, to which a sequel was added the following year; Adventures of an Aide-de-camp, 1848; Walter Fenton, or the Scottish Cavalier, 1850; Bothwell, 1851; Jane Seton, 1853; Philip Rollo, 1854; The Yellow Frigate, 1855; The Phantom Regiment, 1856. Memoirs of Sir John Hepburn and Kirkaldy of Grange have been written by Mr Grant, and Memorials of Edinburgh Castle. Familiar with Scottish history, some of Mr Grant's novels present animated pictures of the times, though often rambling and ill constructed. SAMUEL PHILLIPS-ANGUS B. REACH- Bradshaw, London on the Thames, The Man of the Moon, &c. Being despatched to France as a commissioner for the Morning Chronicle, he enriched his note-book with sketches social, picturesque, and legendary, published with the title of Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone, 1852. The disappointment he experienced in traversing what is considered the most poetic region of France he thus describes : [The South of France.] We entered Languedoc, the most early civilised of the provinces which now make up France-the land where chivalry was first wedded to literature-the land whose tongue laid the foundations of the greater part of modern poetry-the land where the people first rebelled against the tyranny of Rome-the land of the Menestrals and the Albigenses. People are apt to think of this The author of Caleb Stukeley and other tales, MR favoured tract of Europe as a sort of terrestrial paradise -one great glowing odorous garden-where, in the shade SAMUEL PHILLIPS (1815-1854), was for some years of the orange and the olive tree, queens of love and literary critic of the Times, and afterwards literary beauty crowned the heads of wandering troubadours. The director of the Crystal Palace. The only works to literary and historic associations have not unnaturally which he put his name were certain guide-books to operated upon our common notions of the country; and the Palace. Mr Phillips was by birth a Jew, son for the 'South of France,' we are very apt to conjure up of a London tradesman. In his fifteenth year he a brave, fictitious landscape. Yet, this country is no Eden. appeared as an actor in Covent Garden Theatre; It has been admirably described, in a single phrase, the but his friends placed him in the London University,Austere South of France.' It is austere-grim-sombre. and whilst there, he attracted the attention of the It never smiles: it is scathed and parched. There is no Duke of Sussex by an essay on Milton. Through freshness or rurality in it. It does not seem the country, the duke's assistance he was sent to Göttingen but a vast yard-shadeless, glaring, drear, and dry. Let University. On his return, he accepted the office us glance from our elevated perch over the district we of private secretary to Alderman Salomons, but in are traversing. A vast, rolling wilderness of clodded a short time exchanged this post for that of private earth, browned and baked by the sun; here and there tutor in the family of the Marquis of Aylesbury. masses of red rock heaving themselves above the soil A fall from his horse endangered his life, and ever like protruding ribs of the earth, and a vast coating of afterwards his health was weak and precarious. drowthy dust, lying like snow upon the ground. To the His novel of Caleb Stukeley appeared originally in left, a long ridge of iron-like mountains-on all sides Blackwood's Magazine, and was reprinted in 1843. rolling hills, stern and kneaded, looking as though Its success led to other contributions to Blackwood-frozen. On the slopes and in the plain, endless rows of We are all Low People There, and other tales. He scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, occasionally sent letters to the Times, and ultimately and looking exactly like mopsticks. Sprawling and formed a regular engagement with the conductors of that paper. His reviews of books were vigorous and slashing; Dickens, Carlyle, Mrs Stowe, and other popular writers were boldly assailed by the anonymous critic, and his articles became the talk of the town. Two volumes of these literary essays have since been published. Mr Phillips afterwards was connected with the Morning Herald and John Bull newspapers; and in 1852 he joined the Crystal Palace Company, for whom he wrote the Shilling Hand-book and Guide to the Portrait Gallery. The tales of Mr Phillips all bear the impress of his energetic mind and shrewd caustic observation. With better health, he would probably have been more genial, and have accomplished some complete artistic work. straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of burnt- As a first-class journalist and happy descriptive writer, few young men rose into greater favour and popularity than MR ANGUS BETHUNE REACH (1821-1856). He was a native of Inverness; but before he had reached his twentieth year he was in London, busily employed on the Morning Chronicle, With his various tasks and incessant labour, as reporter and critic, and, let us add, honourably the health of the young littérateur gave way. supporting his parents, on whom misfortune had Mental disease prostrated him, and for the last fallen. Besides contributing to the magazines, Mr two years of his life (closed at the age of thirtyReach wrote two novels-Clement Lorimer, one five) he was helpless. The case of one so young, so volume, 1848; and Leonard Lindsay, two volumes, brilliant, so unselfish, and so full of life and vivacity 1850. The first is a tale of the Italian vendetta; thus struck down, was inexpressibly touching. One the second, a spirited story of bucaneering adven- eminent and generous man of letters-Mr Thackeray ture. He wrote also a number of light satires,-by special lectures and personal bounty, condramatic pieces, and sketches of social life-The tributed largely to the comfort of the sufferer; and Natural History of Bores and Humbugs, the Comic another-Mr Shirley Brooks-undertook, and for many months cheerfully fulfilled, some of his friend's No one, I suppose, will accuse me of deifying literary engagements. The Literary Fund also lent Obstinacy, or even mere brute Will; nor of depreciatassistance. It is gratifying to note these instances ing Intellect. But we have had too many dithyrambs of sympathy, but more important to mark the in honour of mere Intelligence; and the older I grow, warning which Mr Reach's case holds out to young the clearer I see that Intellect is not the highest faculty literary aspirants of the dangers of over-application. in man, although the most brilliant. Knowledge, after MR ALBERT SMITH (born at Chertsey in 1816) is all, is not the greatest thing in life; it is not the 'bebest known for his illustrated lectures or amusing all and the end-all here.' Life is not Science. The monologues in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in light of Intellect is truly a precious light; but its which he describes a visit to Constantinople, the aim and end is simply to shine. The moral nature of ascent of Mont Blanc, and a trip to China in 1858-9. man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual Of these tours he has also published accounts. Mr nature. I know they cannot be divorced-that without Smith studied medicine both in London and Paris, intelligence we should be brutes-but it is the tendency but began early to write for the magazines, and of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence threw off numerous tales and sketches-as The to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of Adventures of Mr Ledbury, The Scattergood Family, character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingChristopher Tadpole, The Pottleton Legacy, several ness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in dramatic pieces, &c. His lectures-somewhat in the style of Mathews's 'At Home,' but with the addition of very fine scenery-have been amazingly successful: 'Mont Blanc' was repeated above a thousand times, and almost invariably to crowded houses. G. H. LEWES. MR GEORGE HENRY LEWES, a writer certainly of extraordinary talent and variety of acquirements, but most eminent as a philosophical essayist and critic, has written two novels-Ranthorpe, 1847, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet, 1848. In the former, he traces the moral influence of genius on its possessor, and though there is little artistic power evinced in the plot of the tale, it is a suggestive and able work. In his second novel, which is longer and much more skilfully constructed, Mr Lewes aims chiefly at the delineation of character. His three sisters, Rose, Blanche, and Violet, are typical of different classes of character-the gay, the gentle, and the decided; and as each of the ladies forms an attachment, we have other characters and contrasts, with various complicated incidents and love-passages. The author, however, is more of a moral teacher than a story-teller, and he sets himself resolutely to demolish what he considers popular fallacies, and to satirise the follies and delusions prevalent in society. Here is one of his ethical positions. the world. And in the following we have a sound, healthy doctrine which has also received the support of Thackeray: [Real Men of Genius resolute Workers.] There is, in the present day, an overplus of raving about genius, and its prescriptive rights of vagabondage, its irresponsibility, and its insubordination to all the laws of common sense. Common sense is so prosaic ! Yet it appears from the history of art that the real men of genius did not rave about anything of the kind. They were resolute workers, not idle dreamers. They knew that their genius was not a frenzy, not a supernatural thing at all, but simply the colossal proportions of faculties which, in a lesser degree, the meanest of mankind shared with them. They knew that whatever it was, it would not enable them to accomplish with success the things they undertook, unless they devoted their whole energies to the task. Would Michael Angelo have built St Peter's, sculptured the Moses, and made the walls of the Vatican sacred with the presence of his gigantic pencil, had he awaited inspiration while his works were in progress? Would Rubens have dazzled all the galleries of Europe, had he allowed his brush to hesitate? would Beethoven and Mozart have poured out their souls into such abundant melodies? would Goethe have written the sixty volumes of his works-had they not often, very often, sat down like drudges to an unwilling task, and found themselves [Superiority of the Moral over the Intellectual Nature speedily engrossed with that to which they were so of Man.] Strength of Will is the quality most needing cultivation in mankind. Will is the central force which gives strength and greatness to character. We overestimate the value of Talent, because it dazzles us; and we are apt to underrate the importance of Will, because its works are less shining. Talent gracefully adorns life; but it is Will which carries us victoriously through the struggle. Intellect is the torch which lights us on our way; Will the strong arm which rough-hews the path for us. The clever, weak man sees all the obstacles on his path; the very torch he carries, being brighter than that of most men, enables him, perhaps, to see that the path before him may be directest, the best-yet it also enables him to see the crooked turnings by which he may, as he fancies, reach the goal without encountering difficulties. If, indeed, Intellect were a sun, instead of a torch-if it irradiated every corner and crevice-then would man see how, in spite of every obstacle, the direct path was the only safe one, and he would cut his way through by manful labour. But constituted as we are, it is the clever, weak men who stumble most-the strong men who are most virtuous and happy. In this world, there cannot be virtue without strong Will; the weak know the right, and yet the wrong pursue.' averse? 'Use the pen,' says a thoughtful and subtle author, there is no magic in it; but it keeps the mind from staggering about. This is an aphorism which should be printed in letters of gold over the studio door of every artist. Use the pen or the brush; do not pause, do not trifle, have no misgivings; but keep your mind from staggering about by fixing it resolutely on the matter before you, and then all that you can do you will do: inspiration will not enable you to do more. Write or paint: act, do not hesitate. If what you have written or painted should turn out imperfect, you can correct it, and the correction will be more efficient than that correction which takes place in the shifting thoughts of hesitation. You will learn from your failures infinitely more than from the vague wandering reflections of a mind loosened from its moorings; because the failure is absolute, it is precise, it stands bodily before you, your eyes and judgment cannot be juggled with, you know whether a certain verse is harmonious, whether the rhyme is there or not there; but in the other case you not only can juggle with yourself, but do so, the very indeterminateness of your thoughts makes you do so; as long as the idea is not positively clothed in its artistic form, it is impossible accurately to say what it will be. The magic of the pen lies in the concentration of your thoughts upon one object. Let your pen fall, begin to trifle with blotting-paper, look at the ceiling, bite your nails, and otherwise dally with your purpose, and you waste your time, scatter your thoughts, and repress the nervous energy necessary for your task. Some men dally and dally, hesitate and trifle until the last possible moment, and when the printer's boy is knocking at the door, they begin necessity goading them, they write with singular rapidity, and with singular success; they are astonished at themselves. What is the secret? Simply this; they have had no time to hesitate. Concentrating their powers upon the one object before them, they have done what they could do. Impatient reader! if I am tedious, forgive me. These lines may meet the eyes of some to whom they are specially addressed, and may awaken thoughts in their minds not unimportant to their future career. Forgive me, if only because I have taken what is called the prosaic side! I have not flattered the shallow sophisms which would give a gloss to idleness and incapacity. I have not availed myself of the splendid tirades, so easy to write, about the glorious privileges of genius. My preaching' may be very ineffectual, but at any rate it advocates the honest dignity of labour; let my cause excuse my tediousness. Mr Lewes is a native of London, born in 1817. He received his education partly abroad and partly from Dr Burney at Greenwich. Being intended for a mercantile life, he was placed in the office of a Russian merchant, but soon abandoned it for the medical profession. From this he was driven, it is said, by a feeling of horror at witnessing surgical operations, and he took to literature as a profession. His principal works are a Biographical History of Philosophy, four volumes, 1845; The Spanish Drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon, 1846; Life of Maximilien Robespierre, 1849; Exposition of the Principles of the Cours de Philosophie positif of Auguste Comte, 1853; The Life and Works of Goethe, two volumes, 1855; Sea-side Studies at Ilfracombe, Tenby, the Scilly Isles, and Jersey, 1857; the Physiology of Common Life; &c. Mr Lewes has also been an extensive contributor to the reviews and other periodicals; and he is said to have edited for nearly five years a weekly paper, The Leader. periodical literature, and author of some veterinary works. In the department of old English or antiquarian fiction, MR FOLKESTONE WILLIAMS has obtained celebrity by his tales of Shakspeare and his Friends, The Youth of Shakspeare, Maids of Honour, The Luttrels, &c. He has also written Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, The Court of James I., The Court of Charles I., &c. Among the stories of our own time' is Aspen Court, 1855, by SHIRLEY BROOKS. This novel displays knowledge of the world, as well as originality of thought, and the style is easy and often brilliant. Mr Brooks was engaged by the proprietors of the Morning Chronicle to investigate the condition of the cultivators in the south of Russia, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and part of the letters written at that time have been published under the title of The Russians of the South. For several years Mr Brooks has been one of the regular writers of Punch. He appears equally at home in verse and prose-in light airy satire and acute suggestive remark. The Green Hand, a sea story, by GEORGE CUPPLES (1856), relates the adventures of a naval lieutenant, and is full of romantic and humorous incident. It has enjoyed immense popularity. MR J. C. JEAFFRESON has since 1854 produced three novels-Crew Rise, Isabel, and Miriam Copley. The best feature in these works is that they are of the real school-copies from nature. plain outspoken manner Mr Jeaffreson has written Novels and Novelists, from Elizabeth to Victoria, two volumes, 1858. In the same Alfred Staunton, by J. STANYAN BIGG (1859), may be distinguished from the countless throng of new novels by its possessing thought and literary power, without skilful construction or regularity. drawn by Mr Bigg, are fresh and evidently true to The sketches of society and scenery in Cumberland nature. The novelist is also a poet: his Night and the Soul, a dramatic poem, 1854, is of the style of Bailey's Mystic. Shaving of Shagpat, 1856, and The Ordeal of Richard Two novels by MR GEORGE MEREDITH-The Feverel, 1859-possess originality and interest. The first is called an Arabian entertainment,' and is THE BROTHERS MAYHEW-WILLIAMS-BROOKS thoroughly Eastern in colouring and costume. The -CUPPLES-ETC. A clever serial production, The Greatest Plague of Life, being the adventures of a mistress in search of a good servant, was produced by HENRY and AUGUSTUS MAYHEW, brothers, and extensive miscellaneous writers. From the same copartnery proceeded Whom to Marry and How to get Married, The Image of his Brother, and Paved with Gold. Mr Henry Mayhew (the elder brother, born in London in 1812) was one of the gentlemen employed by the Morning Chronicle in investigations concerning 'Labour and the Poor,' and his contributions, published separately under the title of London Labour and the London Poor, 1851, contain a mass of statistical and curious information. The same gentleman has also written Word-painting from the Rhine, 1856; and he was one of the original writers in Punch. A younger brother, HORACE MAYHEW, is also one of the Punch contributors, and has written a number of light pieces, the most popular of which was Letters Left at the Pastry-cook's. Another brother, THOMAS MAYHEW, commenced the Penny National Library, and otherwise distinguished himself in the service of cheap literature; and a fifth brother, EDWARD MAYHEW, is also connected with second is an English story, illustrating the folly and misery of a perverted, unnatural system of moral training and education. COLONEL EDWARD BRUCE HAMLEY, of the Royal Artillery, is author of Lady Lee's Widowhood, a novel originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, and reprinted in a separate form in two volumes, 1854. This is a lively, spirited story, and was hailed as a remarkable first work. Colonel Hamley also contributed to Blackwood a narrative of the war in Southern Russia, written in a tent in the Crimea, and since published with the title of The Story of the Campaign, 1855. MR FRANCIS E. SMEDLEY, an extensive miscellaneous writer in the periodicals, has published two popular novels-Frank Fairlegh, 1850, and Harry Coverdale's Courtship, 1854-5. Tom Brown's School-days, by an Old Boy, 1857, gives an excellent account of Rugby School under Dr Arnold; also some delightful sketches of scenery, rural customs, and sports in Berkshire. The hero, Tom Brown, is the son of a Berkshire squire; he is genial, good-humoured, and high-spirited; he fights his way nobly at Rugby, and battles against bullying, tossing, and other evils of our public schools. The tone and feeling of the volume are admirable, and it is pleasant to see so healthy and wise a book-for so it may be termed—in its sixth edition within twelve months. The same author has still further commemorated his beloved Berkshire in The Scouring of the White Horse, or the Long Vacation Ramble of a London Clerk, 1858. In this work the country games, traditions, and antiquarian associations of Berkshire are described. [The Browns.] The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, home-spun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew-bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt-with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby-with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen-with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet under Rodney and St Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands; getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty, which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them: and little praise or pudding, which indeed they, and most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St Maurs and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astounded-if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken-to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns. The author of Tom Brown's School-days is understood to be Thomas Hughes, Esq., a Chancery barrister, son of John Hughes, Esq., of Oriel College, Oxford, author of the Itinerary of Provence, and editor of the Boscobel Tracts. Sir Walter Scott pronounced this gentleman 'a poet, a draughtsman, and a scholar.' The once famous ballad of The One-horse Shay, and other political jeux d'esprits in John Bull, were by the elder Mr Hughes. GEORGE ELIOT. Under this name, acknowledged to be fictitious, some modest novelist has published Scenes of Clerical Life, two volumes, 1858, and Adam Bede, three volumes, 1859. The latter work has had remarkable success, five editions having been exhausted almost within as many months. The story is of the Real school, as humble in most of its characters and as faithful in its portraiture as Jane Eyre. The opening sentences disclose the worldly condition of the hero, and form a fine piece of English painting. The scene is the workshop of a carpenter in a village, and the date of the story 1799. [Description of Adam Bede.] The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wainscotting. A scent of pine-wood from a tent-like pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall. On a heap of those soft shavings a rough gray shepherddog had made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of a wooden mantel-piece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing: 'Awake my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run; Shake off dull sloth' Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it presently broke out again with renewed vigour : 'Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear.' Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned muscular man, nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so well poised, that when he drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow shewed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long supple hand, with its bony finger-tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast with the light paper-cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that shone from under strongly-marked, prominent, and mobile eyebrows, indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The real heroine of the tale is Dinah Morris, the Methodist preacher; but Adam Bede's love is fixed described as standing in the dairy of the Hall on a rustic coquette and beauty, thus finely Farm. [Hetty Sorrel.] It is of little use for me to tell you that Hetty's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes had a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she forehead and about her white shell-like ears; it is of was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink and white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice; or how the linen buttermaking apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines; or how her brown stockings and thicksoled buckled shoes, lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle; of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Hetty affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracted kitten-like maiden. Hetty's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gamboling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence-the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog. Poor Hetty's vanity and beauty lead her to ruin. She agrees to marry Adam Bede, but at length goes away to seek her former lover, Arthur Donnithorne, the gentleman, and to hide her shame. The account of her wanderings and her meditated suicide, is related with affecting minuteness and true pathos. Hetty is comforted by the gentle Methodist enthusiast, Dinah Morris, who at last becomes the wife of Adam Bede. The other characters in the novel are all distinct, well-defined individuals. The vicar of the parish, Mr Irvine, the old bachelor schoolmaster, Bartle Massey, and Mr and Mrs Poyser of the Hall Farm, are striking, lifelike portraits. Mrs Poyser is an original, rich in proverbial philosophy, good sense, and amusing volubility. The following is a discussion on matrimony, the interlocutors being the schoolmaster, the gardener, and Mr and Mrs Poyser: [Dialogue on Matrimony.] 'What!' said Bartle, with an air of disgust. 'Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Adam. 'But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Bartle,' said Mr Poyser. 'Come, now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad invention if they'd all been like Dinah.' 'You're out there, Craig,' said Bartle dryly; 'you're out there. You judge o' your garden-stuff on a better plan than that; you pick the things for what they can excel in-for what they can excel in. You don't value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now that's the way you should choose women: their cleverness 'll never come to much-never come to much; but they make excellent simpletons, ripe and strong flavoured.' 'What dost say to that?' said Mr Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife. 'Say!' answered Mrs Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye; why, I say as some folk's tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside.' [Family Likeness.] Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every I meant her voice, man-I meant her voice, that our own, uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of was all,' said Bartle. 'I can bear to hear her speak-ah! so like our mother's-averted from us in cold without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the womenthinks two and two 'll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.' Ay, ay!' said Mrs Poyser; 'one 'ud think, an' hear some folk talk, as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason they can see so little o' this side on 't.' Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter, and winked at Adam, as much as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now. Ah!' said Bartle sneeringly, the women are quick enough-they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself.' 'Like enough,' said Mrs Poyser; for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting 's tongue ready; an' when he out wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.' 'Match!' said Bartle; 'ay, as vinegar matches one's teeth. If a man says a word, his wife'll match it with a contradiction; if he's a mind for hot meat, his wife'll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she'll match him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horsefly is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with the right venom to sting him with.' 'Yes,' said Mrs Poyser, 'I know what the men likea poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the pictur o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly: he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'll tell him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that-they think so much o' themselves a'ready-an' that's how it is there's old bachelors.' 'Come, Craig,' said Mr Poyser jocosely, 'you mun get married pretty quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the women 'ull think on you.' 'Well,' said Mr Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs Poyser, and setting a high value on his own compliments, 'I like a cleverish woman--a woman o' sperrit a managing woman.' alienation; and our last darling child startles us with bitterness long years ago. The father, to whom we owe the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in our best heritage-the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand-galls us, and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence. may note some results brought out by Professor In closing these extracts from the novelists, we Masson in his work on British Novelists, 1859. Since the death of Sir Walter Scott, the annual number of British novels has been quadrupled, as middle of his Waverley series, having risen from compared with what it was when he was in the twenty-six a year, or a new novel every fortnight, to about one hundred a year, or two new novels nearly every week. In all, there have been about 3000 novels, making about 7000 separate volumes, produced in these islands, since the publication of Waverley in 1814. HISTORIANS. SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. At the close of the French revolutionary war, countless multitudes were drawn from every part of Europe to Paris to witness the meeting of the allied sovereigns in 1814. Among them was 'one young man who had watched with intense interest the progress of the war from his earliest years, and who, having hurried from his paternal roof in Edinburgh on the first cessation of hostilities, then conceived the first idea of narrating its events, and amidst its wonders inhaled that ardent spirit, that deep enthusiasm which, sustaining him through fifteen subsequent years of travel and study, and fifteen more of composition, has at length realised itself in the present history.' The work thus characteristically referred to by its author, Mr, now SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, is The History of Europe, from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, ten |