ked features of distinction from those already noticed. They
are all, more or less, indifferent copies either from Heliodorus or
Achilles Tatius; the outline of the story being generally borrowed
from one or the other of these sources, while in point of style,
nearly all appear to have taken as their model the florid rhetorical
display and artificial polish of language which characterize the
latter. Their redeeming point is the high position uniformly assigned
to the female characters, who are neither immured in the Oriental
seclusion of the harem, nor degraded to household drudges, like the
Athenian ladies in the polished age of Pericles:[9] but mingle without
restraint in society as the friends and companions of the other sex,
and are addressed in the language of admiration and respect. But these
pleasing traits are not sufficient to atone for the improbability of
the incidents, relieved neither by the brilliant fancy of the East,
nor the lofty deeds of the romances of chivalry: and the reader,
wearied by the repetition of similar scenes and characters, thinly
disguised by change of name and place, finds little reason to regret
that "the children of the marriage of Theagenes and Chariclea," as
these romances are termed by a writer quoted by d'Israeli in the
"Curiosities of Literature"--have not continued to increase and
multiply up to our own times.

[8] Some bibliographers have assigned it to Photius; but the
opinion of Achilles Tatius expressed by the patriarch, and
quoted at the commencement of this article, precludes the
possibility of its being from his pen.

[9] See Mitford's _History of Greece_, ch. xiii, sect. 1.

* * * * *

THE NEW ART OF PRINTING.

BY A DESIGNING DEVIL.

"Aliter non fit, avite, liber."--MARTIAL.

It is more than probable that, at the first discovery of that
mightiest of arts, which has so tended to facilitate every other--the
art of printing--many old-fashioned people looked with a jealous eye
on the innovation. Accustomed to a written character, their eyes
became wearied by the crabbedness and formality of type. It was like
travelling on the paved and rectilinear roads of France, after winding
among the blooming hedgerows of England; and how dingy and graceless
must have appeared the first printed copy of the Holy Bible, to those
accustomed to luxuriate in emblazoned missals, amid all the pride,
pomp, and vellum of glor