like painting of Australasian wilds and forests with which the volume abounds.

In due time, George and Robinson, having toiled for and won the £1,000, make their way to England just in time, after many mishaps and reverses, by the help of Isaac the Jew, to outwit Meadows just as his villainy is complete, to restore to health and joy of body and of soul poor drooping Susan, and to convince her father to what a fate he was about to sacrifice his child.

The book ends, as it began, with a burst of genuine sunshine. Clouds and rain had been scattered over its wisest pages. But all is Iwell at the close. Even the scoundrel Meadows himself grows repentant at last; and of course George and his Susan are "happy for the rest of their days."

We need scarcely add that no true notion of the story can be formed from this rapid sketch; yet such are the homely materials out of which our author has constructed a deeply touching and true picture of human love and life.

We close our paper with a few choice extracts:

"What can be a more bright and beautiful picture than this, of a crowd of English savages, at the diggings, clustered together to hear the song of an English lark, brought out from home by one of the settlers?

"Like most singers, he kept them waiting a bit; but at last, just at noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him to sing, the little exile began, as it were, to tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round the cage that moment, and, amidst a dead stillness, the bird uttered some uncertain chirps; but, after a while, his memory revived, the same sun that had warmed his little heart at home came glowing down on him here, and he gave music back for it more and more, till at last, midst breathless silence and glistening eyes of the rough diggers hanging on his voice, out burst in that distant land his English song.

"These shaggy men who listened, full of oaths, strife, and lust for gold, were once boys, and had once strolled about English fields, with little sisters and brothers, and seen the lark rise and heard him sing this very song. No note was changed in his immortal song. And so for a moment or two years of vice rolled away like a dark cloud from the memory, and the past shone out in the songshine;" and thus were recalled the joys of home left far behind, the scenes, the faces of bygone days in that happy place.

His view of the effect of the Separate and Silent System on prisoners is fiercely indignant, as it is true. "Eden's last public act,” ere he broke down under excessive toil for the good cause, "was to write at the foot of his report a protest against it, as an impious and mad

attempt to defy God's will as written on the face of man's nature; to crush, too, those very instincts from which rise communities, cities, laws, prisons, churches, civilization; to wreck souls and bodies under pretence of curing souls; not by knowledge, wisdom, patience, Christian love, or any great moral effect; but by the easy and physical expedient of turning one key on each prisoner, instead of a score."

Not that our author for an instant forbids the use of all separate confinement; on the contrary, he would use it in moderation and in mercy. Between this use and "the tigro-asinine use of it in seven English prisons out of nine, is a difference as great as that between arsenic used by a good physician and by a poisoner, between a razorbladed knife in the hands of a Christian, a philosopher, a surgeon, and in those of a savage, a brute, a scoundrel, or a fanatical idiot."

Of the fate of the monster who tyrannized over the unfortunate inmates of B -m gaol, and the miserable iniquity of the punishment which justice awarded him, he says:

"They sent the man-slayer, not to a separate cell, not to a penal prison at all, but to the most luxurious debtor's prison in Europe, and turned this tiger loose among the extravagant, the confiding, and the merely unfortunate," where the debtors shrank from the wretch's touch as from pollution.

The sentence of the Judge who pronounced judgment on the miscreant, he revokes, condemns, and consigns to infamy. "It shall stand alone in all its oblique pity, its cruelty and absurdity. No Judge shall copy it while I live; for, if he does, I swear by the God that made me, that all I have yet said is to what I will print of him as a lady's whip to a thresher's flail. I will buy a sheet of paper as big as a barn-door and nail him to it by his name, as we nail a pole-cat by the throat. The sun shall never set upon his gibbet, and when his bones are rotten, his shame shall live."

This is fierce denunciation; but it contains the fire and brilliancy of true genius, and a good heart.

We should not care to be the Judge to incur our author's displeasure.

A line more, and then we have done. It is the picture of the heroine, her life of joy and goodwill. "She is very happy. Besides the pleasure of loving and being loved, she is in her place in creation. She came into the world to make others happy; she is skil ful and successful. She makes everybody happy; and that is so pleasant. She makes the man she loves happy; and that is so delightful. My reader may laugh; my unfriendly critic sneer (we refuse in toto) at her. Such women as she are not the spice of fiction; but the salt of real life."

We owe Mr. Reade a thousand thanks for the wisdom and beauty and good-will of the pages in which he has taught us that It is never too late to mend.

511

THE HOUSE OF ELMORE*.

THIS is a work, as theatrical critics would say, of stirring incident, powerful plot, and fearful denoument. If bigamy can be considered a virtue, or the contemplation of evil passions an amusement, this book may claim a place in every library of the land: but, whilst there still exists a taste for decency and good morals, even within the pages of a of a three-volume novel, we must withhold our approval from the House of Elmore, though it be full of incident, and abounding in specimens of exciting and piquant writing. Our readers, however, shall judge for themselves, as we will simply point to some of the more salient events of the story, before consigning this romance to the congenial recesses of our waste-paper basket. The story opens by telling us that there lived in London a certain Mr. Elmore, who was alike conspicuous for his public and private virtues, his conversational talent, and love of society. He had, early in life, married an accomplished and handsome woman; and with her he had lived in happiness and respect until the unexpected appearance of a stranger, to whom the wife transfers her affections, and with whom she elopes, leaving behind her a disconsolate husband and four young children. Such is the attractive introduction to the tale.

The infidelity of the wife produces so sad an impression on the feelings and temper of the injured husband as to render him insane, traces of which malady remain upon him until his death. Retiring from the world, he seeks forgetfulness in an old and secluded country residence, overlooking the sea shore, which has appropriately been termed "The Rest." Here, in his saner moments, he entirely devotes himself to the education of his children, though he doggedly refuses to receive the civilities of his neighbours, or allow of the slightest mention of the past existence of his lost wife. His children, therefore, grow up around him, obedient to his iron will, though wanting in the tender care of a mother, and pining for the society of playmates of their own age. They thus became old before their time, and wilful and selfish in their tastes and habits. After some years,

a change comes over the monotony of "The Rest," and its inhabitants, in consequence of the sudden and unexpected arrival of a Frenchman, of the name of Vandan, who, in a chance ramble on the sea shore, is enabled to render signal service to Gilbert Elmore and his brother Luke, children of the recluse-the former of whom meets with an accident which completely cripples him for life. In this

The House of Elmore; a Family History. London: Hurst and Blackett.

R R

Vandan, Mr. Elmore discovers a long-lost and very intimate college friend, whom he of course invites to share his hospitality. This said Frenchman has lost his whole fortune on a stake at cards, and is therefore not at all sorry to accept the offer of a home which may probably be the means of enabling him, with some little manoeuvring, to retrieve his lost position in the world, if not entirely to regain it. Vandan is one of those characters but seldom met, except among the outcasts of the French nation-one of your cold, refined, scheming villains, who care but little what means they employ to effect their end. He soon sets about his work, gains an influence over the father and the children, ruins each in the estimation of the other, and succeeds in defrauding the eldest son of a rightful inheritance, and thereby gets possession of the Elmore property for himself. This he secures by the total ruin of the family. We hear but little of the eldest son, Gilbert, until a late period of the book; and then we find that he, alone, of the once proud Elmores, has made a happy marriage, and supports himself by his own industry. With Luke, the second son, we have more to do; as he, indeed, may be considered the hero of the tale. He is left but a small fortune by his eccentric father; in order, as the will expresses it," that his dear son may be spared the temptations of the world." A small annuity, accompanied by the father's benediction, is bequeathed to Luke, together with a strict injunction that he is to search out the seducer of his mother, and to avenge the family dishonor.

After the funeral of Mr. Elmore, Luke, who cannot endure the society of Vandan, moves in the world of London-his only sister taking refuge with a married aunt. He here renews acquaintance with a Mrs. Morton-a charming, excellent, and loveable young widow, whose many brilliant and excellent qualities have surrounded her with a host of devoted admirers, to all whom she is insensible, bestowing her hand and heart on Luke Elmore. They are married, a child is born, and happiness and virtue appear to reign supreme, until the untimely arrival of a Mr. Morton, who proves to be the real husband of Luke's loving and affectionate wife; and who, it seems, had connived at the illegal marriage of his own wife for vile purposes.

Mrs. Morton dies of grief. The mother of Luke mysteriously turns up, and points to Vandan as her detestable seducer. Luke leaves the care of his child to his elder brother, Gilbert, and resolves to confront the destroyer of his family. He therefore, at once, returns to "The Rest;" picks a quarrel with Vandan, who only laughs at his misfortunes, defies his threats, and glories over his own base acts. A duel is the consequence; Vandan is killed, and the curtain abruptly drops on this last scene of the tragedy, without telling us