[Illustration]

Who does not welcome the works of HAWLEY SMART, the brightest of our novelists?  This is not a conundrum, and, consequently, has no answer.  Everybody likes the books of our literary Major, and everybody will be pleased with The Plunger.  The new Story is in two volumes, and is full of incident.  There is a murder, which carries one through, from the first page to the last, in a state of breathless excitement.  Not that the tale commences with the tragedy.  But its anticipation is as delightful as its subsequent realisation; and, when the mystery is solved, joy becomes universal.  The story is told with so light a hand, that it may be truly said that the only “heavy” thing about the book is its title.

The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson is a good stout volume, full of portraits and interest from beginning to end, forming an important addition to the theatrical history of the day.  The Baron drinks to his old friend, the greatest Rip that ever lived.  “Here’s your health, and your family’s, and may you live long, and prosper!” says, heartily, THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

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[Illustration:  SATIETY.

“OH, MAMMY DARLING, WHY CAN’T THE TOYSHOP-MAN CALL FOR ORDERS EVERY MORNING, LIKE THE BAKER?”]

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CORIOLANUS.

“First Citizen.  Consider you what services he has done for his country?

“Second Citizen.  Very well; and could be content to give him good report for’t, but that he pays himself with being proud.”—­Coriolanus, Act I., Scene 1.

Teuton Coriolanus loquitur:—­

“Was ever man so proud as is this MARCIUS?”
There spake the babbling Tribune!  Proud?  Great gods! 
All power seems pride to men of petty souls,
As the oak’s knotted strength seems arrogance
To the slime-rooted and wind-shaken reed
That shivers in the shallows. 
I who perched,
An eagle on the topmost pinnacle
Of the State’s eminence, and harried thence
All lesser fowl like sparrows!—­I to hide
Like a chased moor-hen in a marsh, and bate
The breath that awed the world into a whisper,
That would not shake a taper-flame or stir
A flickering torch to flaring!
“I do wonder
His insolence can brook to be commanded
Under COMINIUS.”  So the Roman said: 
SICINIUS VELUTUS, thou hadst reason. 
Under COMINIUS!  Who’s COMINIUS now? 
The adolescent Emperor, or his cool
Complacent Chancellor?  COMINIUS! 
Unseasoned youth, or untried middle-age,
A shouting boy, or a sleek-spoken elder,
Hot stripling, cool supplanter! 
I serve not
“Under COMINIUS,” nay!—­yet since he stands
There, where I made firm footing amidst chaos,
Stands in smug comfort where we Titans struggled—­
MOLTKE, and I, and the great Emperor,—­
Struggled for vantage, which he owes to us;—­