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