style is eminently characteristic of Mr. Linden.  Then again, our authors have been too ambitious.  They laboriously assert Mr. Linden to be a marvel of learning,—­a man of vast and curious literary attainments:  but all that their hero does to maintain this reputation and vindicate their opinion is to quote trite passages of poetry, which are all very well, but which every gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected to know, and which no gentleman of ordinary cultivation is expected to quote,—­things that are remembered only to be avoided as utterly threadbare.  One unfortunate instance may be found at the beginning of the second volume.  Mr. Linden’s acquirements are to receive peculiar lustre from a triumph over no ordinary competitor,—­over the intelligent and well-read Doctor Harrison.  Naturally, we expect something recondite, and are by no means satisfied with the trite

  “Cupid and my Campaspe played
  At cards for kisses,” etc.

Mr. Linden might as well have astonished the company by such a transcendent proof of erudition as

      “All the world’s a stage,
  And all the men and women,” etc.

Or, passing “from grave to gay, from lively to severe,” (for novelty in quotations we find to be contagious,) have recounted the wildly erratic history “of that false matron known in nursery rhyme, Insidious Morey,” or quoted

  “How doth the little busy bee.”

After which he might have soared into unapproachable heights of surpassing literary erudition, by informing his awe-struck hearers that the latter poem was written by Doctor Watts!  The fact is, any attempt to give the novelist’s characters a learning which the novelist does not possess is always hazardous.

The Heroine, Miss Faith Derrick, is a pretty, but not remarkably original creation, who taxes our magnanimity sorely at times by her blind admiration of her lover when he is peculiarly absurd, but whose dumb rejection of Doctor Harrison, though a trifle theatrical, is really charming.  Faith is better than Linden:  Linden is "superbe, magnifique"; but Faith is “pretty good.”

But the conception of the Villain is very fine.  In Doctor Harrison we hail a new development of that indispensable character.  Of course, the gentlemanly, good-humored Doctor is not to be considered a villain in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is only a technical villain,—­a villain of eminent respectability.  It is almost unnecessary to add, that he is immeasurably more attractive than the real hero, Mr. Linden.

We regret to say that the conception is not carried out so well as it deserves to be.  Doctor Harrison descends to some low business, quite unworthy of him, such as tampering with the mails.  This is not only mortifying, but entirely unnecessary; inasmuch as Doctor Harrison has a subordinate villain to do all the low villany, in the person of Squire Deacon, who shoots at Mr. Linden from behind a hedge (!), and