SOURCE: A review of Altiora Peto, in The Saturday Review, London, Vol. 56, No. 1456, September 22, 1883, pp. 374-75.

In the following article from the Saturday Review, the unsigned critic compares Altiora Peto with Piccadilly, and discusses Oliphant's views on humanism as revealed in the former.

This story is one of the most entertaining that we have met with for a long time. It groups together a number of very varied human beings, all of whom are vividly, if lightly, drawn, and abounds in pleasant descriptions and smart sayings. The variety of the characters who are collected in it gives it something of the air of a menagerie; but in few places can one spend an idle hour with more amusement and profit than in a good menagerie. The plot of the story, if an unnatural one to start with, is worked out with a great deal of ingenuity, and the...