Mr. Charles Reade's
literary achievements. Its popularity, we are informed, exceeds that of
any of his former works, excepting the first two published by him, "Peg
Woffington," and "Christie Johnstone," which a few years ago startled
the novel-reading world by their eccentricity of style, their
ingenious novelty of construction, and also by their freshness of
sentiment,--comet-books, pursuing one another in erratic orbits of
thought, now close upon the central light of Truth, now distantly remote
from it, but always brilliant, and generally leaving a sparkling train
of recollection behind. The author's subsequent productions, until the
present, have been less successful; some by reason of their positive
inferiority; some because of their extraordinary affectations of
expression, repelling the multitude, who do not choose to risk their
brains through unlimited pages of labyrinthine rhetoric; some, perhaps,
because of their doubtful paternity, evidences of French origin being
in many places discernible. Here, however, there appears a manifest
improvement. This story is exquisitely simple in conception, and the
narration is mostly full of ease and grace, although the unfolding of
the plot is less direct than might have been expected from an author who
professes so deep a regard for the dramatic order of development. There
is, for instance, an episodical chapter of upwards of thirty pages,
describing commercial England in a state of panic, which is very nearly
as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry
into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably
introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial
erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief
preface for its intrusion. In the concluding chapters, too, the various
threads of interest are gathered together with very little artistic
compactness. The reader is disappointed at the tameness of the
culmination, compared with the vigor of the approach thereto. But
otherwise there is much to be charmed with, and not a little to admire.

Mr. Reade has renounced a good number of the odd fancies which at one
time pervaded him. We find no traces of the [Greek: stigmatophobia]
with which he was formerly afflicted. Nouns are wedded to obedient
adjectives, adverbs to their willing verbs, by the lawful mediation
of the recognized authorities of punctuation, the illegitimate and
licentious disregard of which, a