printed. But in England he has
considerable reputation among the higher class of readers and men of
taste for his brilliant powers of mind and extensive acquirements. His
Biographical History of Philosophy we have never seen, but we have
observed allusions to it in other publications, exalting it to a very
high rank among thoughtful books. For some time, if we are not
mistaken, he was the chief literary critic of the Westminster Review,
and many of his articles were marked by strong and deep thinking, a
little injured by vagaries of expression. In a novel by such a writer
we should naturally expect more than a mere love story, more than a
narrative of incidents and representation of passions; and he has not
disappointed expectation. Indeed one can easily see that the book is
based on a philosophical system, and that more is meant than directly
meets the eye. The characters and events all illustrate some problems
in metaphysics and ethics, and refer more to the understanding than
the imagination. The story does not lack interest, nor the personages
character, but both are o'erinformed with meditation. Fine as the
novel undoubtedly is, the author has not given it the requisite
artistical finish to produce an harmonious impression. Speculation on
matters connected with literature, art and politics, essays on the
passions and the will, appear in their naked character amid romantic
incidents and imaginative representation. The author, in short, ought
to have made his book altogether didactic or altogether dramatic, to
fulfill the requisitions of either department. Had he fused all his
abstract thought and practical speculation in the alembic of the
imagination, and accordingly represented all in the concrete form of
character and events, t
he result would have been a much better
novel.

_Euthanasy; or Happy Talk Toward the End of Life. By
William Mountford, Author of Martyria, &c., &c. Boston:
Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo._

The author of this volume is one of the most profoundly meditative
writers living. We are not aware that his productions have had an
extended circulation out of New England, where they are very popular,
and if they have not, we hardly know of a better service we could do
our readers than to advise them to seek his companionship. Martyria
and the present work are two books which no one can read without being
benefitted--without having a deeper sense of the "dread soul within
him,"