That large army of readers whose mere number gave celebrity at once to the authoress of “The Lamplighter” will at first be disappointed with what they may call the location of this new romance by Miss Cummins.  The scene is laid in Syria, instead of New England, and the “village” known to New Yorkers as Boston gives way to “El Fureidis,” a village in the valley of Lebanon.  But while so swift a transition from the West to the East may disappoint that “Expectation” which Fletcher tells us “sits i’ the air,” and which we all know is not to be balked with impunity, there can be no doubt, that, in shifting the scene, the authoress has enabled us to judge her essential talent with more accuracy.  Possessing none of the elements which are thought essential to the production of a sensation, “The Lamplighter” forced itself into notice as a “sensation book.”  The writer was innocent of all the grave literary crimes implied in such a distinction.  The first hundred and fifty pages were as simple, and as true to ordinary nature, as the daisies and buttercups of the common fields; the remaining two hundred pages repeated the stereotyped traditions and customary hearsays which make up the capital of every professional story-teller.  The book began in the spirit of Jane Austen, and ended in that of Jane Porter.

In “El Fureidis” everything really native to the sentiment and experience of Miss Cummins is exhibited in its last perfection, with the addition of a positive, though not creative, faculty of imagination.  Feeling a strong attraction for all that related to the East, through an accidental connection with friends who in conversation discoursed of its peculiarities and wonders, she was led to an extensive and thorough study of the numerous eminent scholars and travellers who have recorded their experience and researches in Syria and Damascus.  Gradually she obtained a vivid internal vision of the scenery, and a practical acquaintance with the details of life, of those far-off Eastern lands.  On this imaginative reproduction of the external characteristics of the Orient she projected her own standards of excellence and ideals of character; and the result is the present romance, the most elaborate and the most pleasing expression of her genius.

There is hardly anything in the work which can rightfully be called plot.  The incidents are not combined, but happen.  A shy, sensitive, fastidious, high-minded, and somewhat melancholy and dissatisfied Englishman, by the name of Meredith, travelling from Beyrout to Lebanon, falls in love with a Christian maiden by the name of Havilah.  She rejects him, on the ground, that, however blessed with all human virtues, he is deficient in Christian graces.  One of those rare women who combine the most exquisite sensuous beauty with the beauty of holiness, she cannot consent to marry, unless souls are joined, as well as hands.  Meredith, in the course of the somewhat rambling narrative, “experiences religion,” and the heroine