lar incidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein
of Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author's invention is
often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so ready, so reckless, and
so abundant, that the reader never tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly
forward from change to change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit
is incessant. The style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never
painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that ought to be the
most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to
relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, and
tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the
book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it
cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon
the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity,--such is the comfortless doctrine of the book.
The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no
virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of
life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is
no glimpse given of any compensating future reserved for men, a future
to redress the balance of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith
and hope, those two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their
sockets; and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with a
whirling world of darkness before you.

Such is "Candide." We select a single passage for specimen. The passage
we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in
this extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure
implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive,
than is the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as
elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking-mask. At least,
you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time how much the grin you
face is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a visor that he
wears.

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought
successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the
ways of the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of
"guide, philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing
the name Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:--

"I have heard great talk of