dosed with doctrine, but then it has
a treble amount of snobbish worldliness and absurd incident to tickle the
palate of pious frivolity. Linda, the heroine, is still more speculative
and spiritual than Laura Gay, but she has been "presented," and has more
and far grander lovers; very wicked and fascinating women are
introduced--even a French _lionne_; and no expense is spared to get up as
exciting a story as you will find in the most immoral novels. In fact,
it is a wonderful _pot pourri_ of Almack's, Scotch second-sight, Mr.
Rogers's breakfasts, Italian brigands, death-bed conversions, superior
authoresses, Italian mistresses, and attempts at poisoning old ladies,
the whole served up with a garnish of talk about "faith and development"
and "most original minds." Even Miss Susan Barton, the superior
authoress, whose pen moves in a "quick, decided manner when she is
composing," declines the finest opportunities of marriage; and though old
enough to be Linda's mother (since we are told that she refused Linda's
father), has her hand sought by a young earl, the heroine's rejected
lover. Of course, genius and morality must be backed by eligible offers,
or they would seem rather a dull affair; and piety, like other things, in
order to be _comme il faut_, must be in "society," and have admittance to
the best circles.

"Rank and Beauty" is a more frothy and less religious variety of the
mind-and-millinery species. The heroine, we are told, "if she inherited
her father's pride of birth and her mother's beauty of person, had in
herself a tone of enthusiastic feeling that, perhaps, belongs to her age
even in the lowly born, but which is refined into the high spirit of wild
romance only in the far descended, who feel that it is their best
inheritance." This enthusiastic young lady, by dint of reading the
newspaper to her father, falls in love with the _prime minister_, who,
through the medium of leading articles and "the _resume_ of the debates,"
shines upon her imagination as a bright particular star, which has no
parallax for her living in the country as simple Miss Wyndham. But she
forthwith becomes Baroness Umfraville in her own right, astonishes the
world with her beauty and accomplishments when she bursts upon it from
her mansion in Spring Gardens, and, as you foresee, will presently come
into contact with the unseen _objet aime_. Perhaps the words "prime
minister" suggest to you a wrinkled or obese sexagenarian; but