s by
which the author distinguishes him from others. Father Debree and Mrs.
Barre are drawn with powerful and discriminating touch, and we recognize
the skill of the writer in the fact that we had read a considerable
portion of the novel before we had any suspicion of the former relations
between them. We may here say that we think that the women who may read
this work will want to know, a little more fully and distinctly than the
author has seen fit to tell, what were the causes and influences which
led to the severing of those relations. We cannot state our meaning more
clearly, without doing what we think should never be done in the review
of a new novel, and that is, telling the story, and thus removing half
the impulse to read it. Skipper George and his household, and the
smuggler Ladford, are very well drawn,--not distinctly original, and yet
with distinctive individual traits, which sharp observation must, to
some extent, have furnished the author with.

But to our commendation of the characters we must make one exception: we
humbly and respectfully submit that Mr. Bangs is a portentous bore, and
we heartily wish that he had been drowned before he ever set his foot
upon the shores of Newfoundland. It is possible, however, that in this
case we are not impartial judges; for we confess, that, for our own
private reading, we are heartily weary of the Yankee,--we mean as a
literary creation,--of the eternal repetition of the character of which
Sam Slick is the prototype,--which is for the most part a caricature,
and no more to be found upon the solid earth than a griffin or a
centaur. And in our judgment the theological discussions between this
worthy and Father Terence are not in good taste. The author surely would
not have us suppose that the wretched, skimble-skamble stuff which the
latter is made to talk is any fair representative of the arguments by
which the Church of Rome maintains its dogmas and vindicates its claims.
A considerable amount of literary skill and a quick perception of the
ludicrous are shown in the ridiculous aspect which the good Father's
statements and reasonings are made to assume in passing through Mr.
Bangs's mind; but we doubt whether such exhibitions are profitable to
the cause of good religion, and whether the advantage thereby secured to
Protestantism is not purchased at the price of some danger to
Christianity. It is not well to teach men the art of making mysteries
ridiculous.

But