ly an
abuse. One takes up such form of fiction to be amused, and one feels
put upon and abused to find it an essay more or less learned on life
and things. If a little information can be injected in the story
unbeknownst, like the parson's liquor told of by President Lincoln,
well and good; but it is rarely done successfully. If philosophy is
indulged in, one quickly detects the bald head and wrinkled brow; if
it is religion, the cloven hoof or wicked tail of Satan betrays the
author.

When it was once proposed by a staff officer to drive an obnoxious
guest from headquarters by a liberal use of burnt brimstone, General
Sherman said, "That is high strategy in its way, but it is not war."
"When one goes a turkey-hunting one does not care to be killed by
bears," said an old hunter; and when a seeker after amusement, to be
found in a love-story, opens what purports to be a novel, it is
shocking to find it a learned treatise on some abstruse subject.

The book before us is another illustration of this defect. It opens
with an exquisite picture of Constantinople a hundred years since. In
this prologue some wicked conduct is rather hinted at than told. After
this the story opens and moves on pleasantly enough, until the fact is
developed that the hero and heroine are reproductions of the sinful
grandfather and grandmother long since lost to the census-taker of the
British empire. What was evil in the ancestors is an innocent love in
the descendants; and the fair author exhibits considerable power by
preserving the sanity of her characters, to say nothing of that of the
reader, in the complications and situations that follow.

The book is of interest to us, not so much for what it accomplishes,
as the promise of better things. It exhibits all the qualities
necessary to a successful writer of fiction. There is a keen
appreciation of character, a love of nature, and a clear, incisive
style that make a combination which if properly directed insures
success.

THE PASSING OF THE YEAR.

Like some triumphal Orient pageantry
Beheld afar in slow and stately march,
Glittering with gold and crimson blazonry,
Till lost at length through many a dusky arch--
I saw the day's last clustering spears of light
Enter the cloudy portals of the night.

The wind, whose brazen clarions had blown
Imperious fanfarons before the sun
All the brief wi