are plot that interests, and the disposition of mankind to
listen to story-telling is such that the idlest _conteur_ can entertain.
We must demand of literary art, however, that it shall interest in
people's fortunes by first interesting in people. Can any one of all Mr.
Collins's readers declare that he sympathizes with the loves of Armadale
and Neelie Milroy, or actually cares a straw what becomes of either of
those insipid young persons? Neither is Midwinter one to take hold on
like or dislike; and Miss Gwilt is interesting only as the capable but
helpless spider out of which the plot of the story is spun. Pathos there
is not in the book, and the humor is altogether too serious to laugh at.

_Four Years in the Saddle._ By COLONEL HARRY GILMORE. New York: Harper
and Brothers.

It is sometimes difficult to believe, in reading this book, that it is
not the production of Major Gahagan of the Ahmednuggar Irregulars, or
Mr. Barry Lyndon of Castle Lyndon. Being merely a record of personal
adventure, it does not suggest itself as part of the history of our late
war, and, but for the recurrence of the familiar names of American
persons and places, it might pass for the narrative of either of the
distinguished characters mentioned.

In dealing with events creditable to his own courage and gallantry,
Colonel Gilmore has the unsparing frankness of Major Gahagan, and it
must be allowed that there is a remarkable likeness in all the
adventures of these remarkable men. It is true that Colonel Gilmore does
not fire upon a file of twenty elephants so as to cut away all their
trunks by a single shot; but he does kill eleven Yankees by the
discharge of a cannon which he touches off with a live coal held between
his thumb and finger. Being made prisoner, he is quite as defiant and
outrageous as the Guj-puti under similar circumstances: at one time he
can scarcely restrain himself from throwing into the sea the insolent
captain of a Federal gunboat; at another time, when handcuffed by order
of General Sheridan, he spends an hour in cursing his captors. The
red-hair of the Lord of the White Elephants waved his followers to
victory; Colonel Gilmore's "hat, with the long black plume upon it," is
the signal of triumph to his marauders. Both, finally, are loved by the
ladies, and are alike extravagant in their devotion to the sex. Colonel
Gilmore, indeed, withholds no touch that can go to make him the hero of
a dime novel; and there is no