is it?" No, they won't hear. Each one is intent on her volume, and an
irritable answer, in a don't bother kind of manner, is all that I can
obtain. The novel is Miss BRADDON's latest, _One Life, One Love_ (but
three volumes, for all that), in which they are absorbed. Later on,
at intervals, I get the volumes, and, raven-like, secrete them. I can
quite understand the absorption of my young friends. Marvellous, Miss
BRADDON! Very few have approached you in sensation-writing, and none
in keeping up sensationalism as fresh as ever it was when first I
sat up at night nervously to read _Aurora Floyd_, and _Lady Audley's
Secret_. In this bad time of year (I am writing when the snow is
without, and the North-East wind is engaged in cutting leaves), the
Baron recommends remaining indoors with this Three-volume Novel as
a between lunch and dinner companion, only don't take it up to your
bed-room, and sit over the fire with it, or--but there, I won't
mention the consequences. Keep it till daylight doth appear. The
Baron being a busy man--no, Sir, not a busy-body,--is grateful to the
authors of good short stories in Magazines. Many others agree with the
Baron, who wishes to recommend "Saint or Satan" in _The Argosy_;
The story of an "Old Beau," which might have been advantageously
abbreviated in _Scribner_; an odd tale entitled, "The Phantom
Portrait," in the _Cornhill_; which leaves the reader in doubt as to
whether he has been egregiously "sold" or not; and, above all, the
short and interesting--too short and most interesting--paper on
THACKERAY, in _Harper's Monthly_, with fac-similes of some of the
great humorist's most eccentric and most spirited illustrations,
conceived in the broadly burlesquing spirit that was characteristic
of GILRAY and ROWLANDSON. THACKERAY, philosopher and satirist, who
can take us behind the scenes of every show in _Vanity fair_, who
can depict the career of the scoundrel _Barry Lyndon_, of the
heathen _Becky Sharp_, and the death-bed of the Christian soldier and