make that spot the exponent of all.--So much for the title.

We now open the book, and are immediately in the midst of scenes which
have an indescribable familiarity. We have a confused sense of having
met these people before. Certainly they have a strong family-likeness to
denizens of modern novels. The sewing-circles and small-talk savor of
the cheap wit of Widow Bedott. Jutnapore must have descended in a right
line from Borrioboola-Gha. The traditional spinsters with their
"withered bosoms" march in four abreast. The hereditary clergymen,
hungry, sectarian, sanctimonious, rabid, form into line with the
precision acquired by long drill. The hero and heroine stand up as good
as married in the first chapter. The features of the hero are instantly
recognizable. There is the small stir, the rising of the curtain, and
_some one_ steps upon the stage, "tall and sunburnt, with a
moustache,"--'tis he! Alonzo!--"with easy self-possession and a genial
air,"--the very man,--"habitual manners slightly touched with reserve,
but no man could unbend more easily,"--who but he, our old
acquaintance?--"a rich baritone voice," "strung with true masculine
fibre," striking in among the sharps and flats and bringing them all
into harmony,--that is the invariable way. "Generally, the least
intellectual persons sing with the truest and most touching expression,
because voice and intellect are rarely combined, [the reason seems to us
rather a restatement of the fact,] but Maxwell Woodbury's fine organ had
not been given to him at the expense of his brain." Certainly not. He
never would have been our hero, if it had. When you add, that "his
manners were thoroughly refined, and his property large enough and not
too large for leisure," why, one might almost send a sheriff to arrest
him, trusting to this description to make sure of his identity. The
heroine is of course the "pale, quiet, earnest-looking girl," who, in
the midst of snoods, frocks, jackets, pocket-handkerchiefs, and other
commonplace handicraft, is embroidering with green silk upon warm brown
cloth the thready stems and frail diminishing fronds of a group of
fern-leaves,--who alone among assured matrons and faded spinsters is
visited by "a flitting blush, delicate and transient as the shadow of a
rose tossed upon marble,"--and who matches the "glorious lay" of the
hero, that "thrilled and shook her with its despairing solemnity," with
an Alpine song, that, pure and sweet, sets the h