no approaching the confines of infidelity or indecency in order to produce a sensation; nothing but what is perfectly legitimate and decorous. And yet we find, notwithstanding, that the tales in the Leisure Hour are, to the full, as interesting and absorbing as the most highly-exciting productions of the spasmodic school of writers. That the periodicals under notice have obtained immense circulation is an encouraging sign of the times. We are getting more moral and truth-loving than our fathers perhaps ;

at any rate, there is published infinitely less of what

taste has risen above the level of the abominable. The demand for filth having ceased, the supply has therefore fallen off by natural consequence. Periodicals like those now before us have superseded the rubbish that once flooded the country, and the moralist has now no longer to lament the issue of sedition, radicalism, infidelity, and indecency, in weekly numbers and monthly parts. The Reasoner, one of the last of so-called rationalistic publications, has been for some time discontinued, and Messrs. Holyoake and Iconoclast have

is vile and worthless than there was fifteen, twenty, or even ten years since. When the public taste lay in the direction of ribaldry and obscenity, there were not wanting men to issue a Satirist, a Paul Pry, a Town, or the Mysteries of London: there was no lack of supply when the demand was for the vile and the contaminating.

But the cheap literature of our day has been purged of its atrocities; and this, owing, we believe, not to any scarcity of writers willing to descend to the public taste, but because the public

been forced to find vent for their superabundant energies in a direction less offensive to the tastes of the great mass of readers. Works of this class have failed and died out from simple atrophy and inanition, and all good men hail the change with unmixed delight. We may here be allowed to express a regret that the older Society, that for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, has not, like the Religious Tract Society, issued a popular illustrated serial. One was announced, not long ago, under the title of Our Daily Task, but which,

Some of these, we are informed, have cost as much as £30, a sum which appears marvellous when we look at the low price of the publication. Amongst the artists are the celebrated J. B., whose delineations of animals are equal to Landseer's, and, in some respects, even superior. Witness the remarkable cut of the sending forth of the dove, in the

present volume; but it is not alone on the artists that Messrs. Strahan expend large sums of money. They have engaged the talented author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," for the forthcoming volume, while Dr. Caird is to take the place of Dr. Guthrie; these names alone would ensure success to any publication, but they are only two out of many.

may be taken as a fair specimen of the kind of writing which finds a willing public in our day; and, combined with the short essays, poems, historiettes, scien

tific scraps, and miscellanies, common to all the weekly and monthly issues, forms, when the several parts are collected, a volume fitted equally for the perusal of the gentle and the simple. Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper is issued in penny numbers weekly,and con

tains a vast a

mount of amusing and instructive reading-principally of the lighter kind -in addition to one or more sen

sation stories. These latter are written upon the plan made familiar to the reading public by Mr. Dickens, in All the Year Round. Each

weekly portion contains a startling event, and leaves off just

66

thing of this depending upon plot, and exceptional incidents, is observable in Sir Bulwer Lytton's 'Strange Story ;" and to the same causes, though infinitely inferior in the manner and style of the telling, we must attribute the success of Mr. Smith's novels in Cassell's Family Paper, in their periodical form, and their comparative failures when collected into volumes. This plan doubtless struck many of the readers of All the Year Round as new and peculiar; but it was neither new nor unusual, for it is the plan that has been pursued in the London Journal, Family Herald, and other weeklies, for the last

at a point that raises the curiosity of the reader, and leads him (or her, for the majority of the purchasers of the penny weeklies are of the gentler sex) to anticipate the next number with anxious craving. The readers of Great Expectations, and The Woman in White, were led on, week by week, by the relation of strange, curious, remarkable, mysterious, and almost improbable events, which succeeded each other with such wonderful rapidity, that the interest of the tales consisted mainly in the perplexing involutions and unravellings of deeply-laid plots-of course to the sacrifice, in some measure, of the unity of design and the delineation of character which belong to more regularly-written stories. This was more apparent in the production of Mr. Wilkie Collins' romance than in that of Mr. Dickens. In the former, indeed, the interest depended almost entirely upon plot; but so artfully was it contrived, that in perusing it, and in the effort to solve, the riddle propounded by the author, the reader almost forgot that in no one of the characters introduced were there any of those traits that make us love Kate Nickleby, despise Pecksniff, sympathize with Paul Dombey, or abhor the dwarf Quilp. Some

But

ten or fifteen years. Cassell's Penny

contains fairlywritten essays and sketches upon a variety of subjects; scientific, useful, and entertaining facts and facetia; poetry, chess, and answers to correspondents. In this latter department there is a quantity of useful knowledge intermixed with much that would be better avoided. Editors appear to their readers to possess universal knowledge, but we suspect that, in a large number of cases, many of these answers to correspondents are manufactured to suit an occa

sion, especially as in all the penny periodicals they occupy precisely a page of the weekly issue, generally the last.

One recommendation of Cassell's Family Paper, and certainly not a mean one, lies in the excellence and abundance of its illustrations. Each number contains at least three large pictures, and sometimes half-a-dozen smaller ones, the principal woodcut is on the first page and illustrates the current story, while in the inner pages are designssome of them from French or German sourcesof public buildings, statues, manufactures, paintings, &c. One of the original designs here given will convey a good notion of the style in which the engravings are executed for this paper. But s feature by no means to be overlooked is the educa tional. In the last volume issued, there is a series of articles on Orthography, and another by Mr. Cassell himself on "America as it Is." In former volumes there have been treatises on oratory, writ ing, languages, &c., which appear to have been well received, for they have since been collected into cheap volumes, which sell largely. Altogether, the Family Paper is a favourable specimen of the literature of the million, and, week by week, conveys