“At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and the sea was gorgeous with miles and miles of great ruby dimples:  it was the first glowing smile of southern latitude.  The night stole on so soft, so clear, so balmy, all were loath to close their eyes on it; the passengers lingered long on deck, watching the Great Bear dip, and the Southern Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of glorious stars most of us have never seen and never shall see in this world.  No belching smoke obscured, no plunging paddles deepened; all was musical; the soft air sighing among the sails; the phosphorescent water bubbling from the ship’s bows; the murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the great calm:  home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the sky, the heart:  the ship, making a track of white fire on the deep, glided gently, yet swiftly, homeward, urged by snowy sails piled up like alabaster towers against a violet sky, out of which looked a thousand eyes of holy, tranquil fire.  So melted the sweet night away.

“Now carmine streaks tinged the eastern sky at the water’s edge, and that water blushed; now the streaks turned orange, and the waves below them sparkled.  Thence splashes of living gold flew and settled on the ship’s white sails, the deck, and the faces; and, with no more prologue, being so near the line, up came majestically a huge, fiery, golden sun, and set the sea flaming liquid topaz.

    “Instant the lookout at the foretop-gallant-mast-head hailed the
    deck below.

    “‘Strange sail!  Right ahead!’

* * * * *

    “Ah! the stranger’s deck swarms black with men!

    “His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned through the
    gaps like black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out
    he came in chase.

    “The breeze was a kiss from Heaven, the sky a vaulted sapphire,
    the sea a million dimples of liquid, lucid gold.”

In conclusion, we must pronounce Mr. Reade’s merit, in our judgment, to belong not so much to what he has already done as to what, if life be allowed him, he is yet to do.  All his previous works read like ‘studies,’ in the light of his last.  For “Very Hard Cash” is the beginning of a new era; it shows the careful hand of the artist doing justice to the conceptions of genius, in the prime of his vigor, with all his powers well in hand.  The forms of literature change with the necessities of the age,—­to some future generation what illustration the dramatists were to the Elizabethan day the knot of superior novelists will be to this, and among them all Charles Reade is destined to no subordinate rank.

* * * * *

HOW ROME IS GOVERNED.

There are a thousand descriptions of Rome, its antiquities, galleries, ceremonies, and manners, but hardly any, that I remember, of the organization of the Papal Government,—­that wonderful power which long played the chief part in the social and political revolutions of Europe, which, even in its decay, preserves so much of its original grandeur, and still clings to its traditions with a tenacity of conviction that commands our respect, although the remembrance of the evil that it has done compels us, as men and as Christians, to rejoice at the prospect of its fall.