Mrs. Forrester. Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott & Co.--The Wellfields. By Jessie Fothergill.
(Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Holt & Co.--Troublesome Daughters.
By L.B. Walford. (Leisure--Hour Series.) New York: Holt &
Co.--Brigitta. By Berthold Auerbach. (Leisure--Hour Series.) New
York: Holt & Co.

There is a time appointed to read novels--a time which belongs, like
that of other good things, to youth, when the real and the ideal merge
into each other, and even the most practical beliefs turn upon the
notion that the world was created for ourselves, and that the general
system of things is bound to furnish circumstances and incidents which
shall flatter our unsatisfied desires. It seems a pity that it should
not fall to the lot of the critic to write down his impression of new
books at this epoch, when he is most fitted to enjoy them. When romance
and other delights have blankly vanished--"gone glimmering through the
dreams of things that were"--he is scarcely fitted to trust the worth of
his own impressions. Reading from mere idle curiosity or with critical
intentions, and reading with delight, with eager absorption in the story
and an eager desire to know how it turns out, are two different matters.
The loss of this capacity for enjoyment of the every-day novel is not a
subject for self-gratulation, coming as it does from our own absence of
imagination and from narrowing instead of increasing powers. That period
of our existence when we could read anything which offered should be
looked back upon with a feeling of purely admiring regret, and in our
efforts to master the novel of to-day we should endeavor to bring back
the glory and the sweetness of the early dream.

It is not so very long ago that Mr. William Black's novels began to
charm us. He did not take Fame at a single leap, but wooed her
patiently, and suffered many a repulse. His first book, _Ion; or,
Marriage_, was probably the very worst novel ever written by a man who
was finally to make a great success. _The Daughter of Heth_ achieved
this result, and _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, A Princess of
Thule_ and _Macleod of Dar_ deepened, one by one, the witchery the
first threw over us. The author's power was especially shown in
investing his maidens with glamour and piquancy: Coquette and Sheila led
their captives away from the suffocating dusts and the burning heats of
life. Then his backgrounds were so well chosen--those myst