with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest.’  The writer likewise holds by that system which his own practice has done so much to recommend—­of giving locality and time to all abstract thought, and thus securing in the case of the majority of readers an interest and a reality in no other way to be attained.  Admirable as are the essays contained in the work, but for their setting in something of a story, and their vivification by being ascribed to various characters, and described as read and discussed in various scenes, they would interest a very much smaller class of readers than now they do.  No doubt much of the skill of tho dramatist is needed to secure this souce of interest.  It can be secured only where we feel that the characters are living men and women, and the attempt to secure it has often proved a miserable failure.  But it is here that the author of Friends in Council succeeds so well.  Not only do we know precisely what Dunsford, Milverton, and Ellesmere are like; we know exactly what they ought and what they ought not to say.  The author ran a risk in reproducing those old friends.  We had a right to expect in each of them a certain idiosyncrasy; and it is not easy to maintain an individuality which does not dwell in mere caricature and exaggeration, but in the truthful traits of actual life.  We feel we have a vested interest in the characters of the three friends:  not even their author has the right essentially to alter them; we should feel it an injury if he did.  But he has done what he intended.  Here we have the selfsame men.  Not a word is said by one of them that ought to have been said by another.  And here it may be remarked, that any one who is well read in the author’s writings, will not fail here and there to come upon what will appear familiar to him.  Various thoughts, views, and even expressions, occur which the author has borrowed from himself.  It is easy to be seen that in all this there is no conscious repetition, but that veins of thought and feeling long entertained have cropped out to the surface again.

We do not know whether or not the readers of Friends in Council will be startled at finding that these volumes show us the grave Milverton and the sarcastic Ellesmere in the capacity of lovers, and leave them in the near prospect of being married—­Ellesmere to the bold and dashing Mildred; Milverton to the quiet Blanche.  The gradual tending of things to this conclusion forms the main action of the book.  The incidents are of the simplest character:  there is a plan but no plot, except as regards these marriages.  Wearied and jaded with work at home, the three friends of the former volumes resolve on going abroad for awhile.  Midhurst and the girls accompany them:  and the story is simply that at various places to which they came, one friend read an essay or uttered a discourse (for sometimes the essays are supposed to have been given extempore), and the others talked about it.  But the gradual progress of matters