ly drawn,
never such a grotesque storm of noisy health,--the matchless Philippa!
After reading Miss Sheppard's juveniles, you feel that you have been in
most good and innocent company all day; and since it is necessary for
an author to become for the moment that nature of which he writes, this
author must have been something very good and innocent in herself in
order to uphold this strain so long. Of those accessible, the best is
that entitled, "Round the Fire,"--a series of tales purporting to be
told by little girls, and each of extraordinary interest; but the
one she herself preferred is yet with four others in the hands of an
Edinburgh publisher, and perhaps yet in manuscript,--the name of
this being "Prince Gentil, Prince Joujou, and Prince Bonbon, or the
Children's Cities." This reminds one that cities, in the abstract, seem
to have been with her a subject of unceasing wonder and pleasure,--from
Venice, with its shadowy, slippery, silent water-ways to X, that ideal
city of the North; and where is there anything to excel the Picture of
Paris, drawn minutely and colored, his prison-prophecy, Paris as it was
to be created, rather than restored, by Louis Napoleon? "Then he took
from his pocket a strong magnifying-glass, and put it gently into
Rodomant's hand. Rodomant grasped it, and through it gazed long and
eagerly. And from that hieroglyphic mist there started, sudden and
distinct as morn without a cloud, a brilliant bird's-eye view of a
superb and stupendous city, a dream of imaginative architecture, almost
in itself a poem. Each house of each street, each lamp and fountain,
each line of road and pavement, marked as vividly as the glorious
domes, the pointing pillars, grand gates and arches, proud palaces in
inclosures of solemn leafage, the bridges traced like webs of shadow,
the stately terraces and dim cathedrals. Green groves and avenues and
vivid gardens interlaced and divided the city within the walls; and
without, masses of delicate shrubbery, as perfectly defined, were
studded with fair villas of every varied form, melting gradually and
peacefully, as it seemed, to a bright champaign embroidered with fence
and hedge-row.... A sort of visionary pageant unrolled to him, partly
memorial, in part prophetic. He knew he had seen something like it,--but
when and where? What planet boasted that star of cities for strength
and lustre that must surpass new London and old Thebes? For Rodomant had
the mathematical gift