merely the traditional Yankee compound of patents and conjectures, a
little smarter than usual, as of course a passage through Mr. Reade's
pen must make him;--he never touched his brain. Vespasian, also, is not
so good as he might be, although one enjoys his contempt for the
pirate's crew of Papuans, Sooloos, and Portuguese, as a "mixellaneous
bilin' of darkies," and finds something inimitable in his injured
dignity over the anomalous _sobriquet_ afforded him, whose changes he
rings through analogy and anatomy till he declares himself to be only a
"darned anemone." The real charm of the book, however, lies in the
beautiful relation which it pictures between mother and children, and in
the nature of the daughter herself, so exuberant, so dancing, yet the
foam subsiding into such a luminous body of clearness, which so lights
up the page with its loveliness, that, seeing how an artless woman is
foreign to Mr. Reade's ideas, we are forced to believe that Nature was
too strong for him and he wrote against the grain. Nevertheless, there
is enough of his own prejudice retained for piquancy,--and since the
poor things must be insignificantly wicked, see how charming they can
be! There are many scenes between these covers that would well bear
repetition, were they not too fresh in the reader's mind to require it;
we will content ourselves with a single one, which contains the only
pretentious writing of the whole novel, done at a touch, with a light,
loose pen, but showing beyond compare the soul of the poet through the
flesh of the novelist.

"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