the most conventional type.  The male characters in his early books were, in fact, shuttle-cocks to be tossed hither and thither by the mysterious contradictions, the incomprehensible inconsistencies, of his heroines, whose scheme of existence was the indulgence of every whim, and whose notion of logic was that one paradox must educe another still more startling.  Having finally made up his mind as to the insoluble nature of the female problem, he seems inclined to discard mere clevernesses and prettinesses and to advance into the broad arena of real life, with its diversity of actors and its multiplicity of interests.  Both Bartley Hubbard in “A Modern Instance” and Silas Lapham in the book before us strike us as admirable characterizations.  If Lapham is in certain respects a less original presentation than Bartley Hubbard, he is at least a hero who draws more strongly upon the reader’s sympathies and takes surer hold of the popular heart.  In fact, Silas, with his big, hairy fist, his ease in his shirt-sleeves, his boastful belief in himself, his conscience, his ambition, and his failure, makes, if we include his sensible wife, the success of the novel before us.  The daughters are not, to our thinking, so well rendered; while the Coreys, sterling silver as they ought to be, impress us instead as rather thin electro-plates.  The Boston Brahmins have entered a good deal into literature of late, but so far without any brilliant results.  According to their chroniclers, they spend most of their time discussing in what respects they are providentially differentiated from, their fellow-beings.  Sometimes they put too fine a point upon it and wholly fail to make themselves felt.  But then again their superior knowledge of the world is patent to the most careless observer.  For instance, when Mrs. Corey pays a visit to Mrs. Lapham she apologizes for the lateness of the hour, explaining that her coachman had never been in that part of Boston before.  This naturally casts an ineffaceable stigma upon the respectable square where the Laphams have hitherto resided, and shows that between the two ladies there is a great gulf fixed.  Again, to point sharply social distinctions, young Corey says to his father,—­

“I don’t believe Mrs, Lapham ever gave a dinner.”

“And with all that money!” sighed the father.

“I don’t believe they have the habit of wine at table.  I suspect that when they don’t drink tea and coffee with their dinner they drink ice-water.”

“Horrible!” said Bromfield Corey.

“It appears to me that this defines them.”

The Coreys have the liveliest sense of all these nuances of deviation from their standards, and strike us as rather amateurish, clever people who want to make sure of nice points and get on in the world, rather than as real flesh-and-blood aristocrats with the freedom and ease of acknowledged social supremacy.