POETRY. A Welcome, 98. Old Alexandria, 98. O Tempora Mutantur! 98. On Charlotte Ness, 98.

SHORT ARTICLES.-New Barometrical Observations, 103. Gun Cotton Experiments in Austria, 108. Bishop of Natal, 108. Spiritualism before Birth, 128. Transplanting Salmon, 133.

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From The Examiner.

Verner's Pride. By Mrs. Henry Wood, Au-
thor of "East Lynne," etc. In Three Vol-
umės. Bradbury and Evans.
Aurora Floyd. By M. E. Braddon, Author
of "Lady Audley's Secret." In Three
Volumes. Tinsley Brothers.

dler's shop in a back alley to buy the herring, and his master eats the whole of it with utmost relish. There are some fastidious novel-readers to whom one of Miss Braddon's

stories may have, in this way, the relish of a penny herring out of the back alley.

What is there to raise the novels of these ladies above mediocrity? Are they good in language, thought, or story? Good writing will often cover weakness of invention. Original thought will give a true charm even to a tale careless in diction and poor in plot. Or a well-contrived plot will make the fortune of a tale in which the writing is poor and all the thoughts are superficial. In all Mrs. Wood's novels the language is weak, sinning as nine average novels in ten do, but much more than is customary, against grammar, and, as the lady would say, "to a degree." We are very sure, also, that neither Mrs. Wood nor Miss Braddon, whose novels

THE slight but kindly recognition of weak cleverness—that is all the criticism due from us to novels by the authoress of "East Lynne," and the silence in which it would be kindness to pass over the crude, coarse, and prosaic tails of bigamy and murder by the authoress of" Lady Audley's Secret," no longer fit the time when these writers have been forced-chiefly or altogether, we fear, by the misapplied laudations of a critic in the Times-into a popularity discreditable to the public taste. The popularity no. doubt is artificial, largely made up of the applause of those who would be influenced in their judgment by announcements of tremendous are coarser and worse than Mrs. Wood's, has success in an advertisement or street placard. Of Miss Braddon, the authoress of "Lady Audley's Secret," newspapers have been telling us lately that she was a provincial actress, and a writer in Reynolds's Miscellany. For that journal her style and matter were, we can suppose, perfectly well suited. Her novels are of the school of Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds, literature of the kitchen as it used to be, and to give currency to them among educated readers without placing the name of Reynolds on a level with that of Sir Walter Scott, Miss Austen, or Mr. Dickens, is a gross injustice. How long, too, will society refuse to place the name of its Smith beside that of its Shakspeare? There is a Mr. Smith, whose works of fiction appear in penny weeklies not yet fashionable, and achieve an immense success among the class of readers whose coarse fare is now sought by the dainty. He has, we believe, more readers than Mr. Dickens. Why shall he not be fetched up out of the kitchen? A pleasant writer in one of the magazines this month pictures an exquisite gentleman to whom everything upon his daintily appointed breakfast table is uneatable. "Did you ever," asks his doctor, who is breakfasting with him, "try a red herring?” Here is a glorious idea, here is an absolutely new sensation to be got; the faithful serving-man is despatched immediately to Fortnum and Mason's for a red herring. He goes to a chan

achieved in any book one shrewd and original thought. At every turn of events that suggests reflection each lady punctually and exclusively provides her reader with the commonplace appointed for the occasion. The merit may lie, perhaps, in the far-fetched invention of their tales, in which they labor to be sensational. Here, however, to Mrs. Wood's especial credit be it said, one lady bases her fiction on a womanly notion of right, and shows a sense of delicacy that restrains her from the coarser imaginings of the sensation novelist. For this reason she is falling behind in the race. She cannot give her mind sufficiently to the painting of a true halo of bigamy and murder about the head of any heroine or hero. In this story of Verner's Pride Mrs. Wood doubtless begins well enough, as notions of a good beginning go, by mysteriously drowning a seduced girl in a pond, and raising a question of Who put her in? Four or five persons go through some part of the story with the now relishable game flavor of a taint of suspicion of murder on the reader's mind; and then, in the second volume, a first husband buried in Australia is so distinctly supposed to have re-appeared that the full relish of bigamy is given to a portion of the story. But the murder proves after all to have been no murder, a mere case of seduction and suicide, and the bigamy is wiped out after it had been carefully painted in. The re-appeared hus

band proves to have been personated. If | head with the clapper of the great bell. As Mrs. Wood desires to run a race of popular- the bone crushes between bell and clapper ity with Miss Braddon, there must be no there is a muffled toll that strikes into the baulking of the reader's appetite for bigamy heart of every villager. Author going to and murder; there must be constant addition breakfast upon devilled herring, leaves Mrs. instead of diminution of the dose of cayenne Blenkinsop at the bell-rope, and coming back, in the literary curry. It is more than time resumes the midnight conversation in another that we had three husbands to embarrass any story between the Black Rat-catcher and his really interesting heroine. Lady Audley was wife, the Marchioness of Bloodybones, in glad to think she had got rid of her first by Deadman's Lane. She was left on the point putting him down the well, and then only of paying him two thousand pounds to go tried to rid herself of an inconvenient in- away. "We are observed," says he. And quirer by burning him in his bed. But think authoress proceeds to bring a hunchback into of the shifts and perplexities of a wife with the hedge, who picks the lady's pocket of eight husbands, being not only mysteriously her handkerchief, and after she has gone, married like Aurora Floyd to her noble hus- with that handkerchief smothers the ratband's horse-trainer, but also to the beadle catcher, leaving him with the marchioness's of whose cane she is in dread, and also to the cipher and initials hanging out of his mouth. Emperor of China, who writes compromising The author dines on pork pie and plum cake, letters by each mail, the more compromising and returns to the affairs of the third heroas she is also secretly married to the post-ine, who has a will to forge before explainman, who is of a suspicious temper, and may ing in a soliloquy how the relentless hand of open any letter addressed to her; also, under destiny has made her what she is, and she is peculiar circumstances, to the giant of a more to be pitied than blamed for having show that is coming to be set up at a fair in married and poisoned twenty-seven of her the neighborhood; also to a maniac whom lovers. He for whom she stealthily retires she keeps in the cellar, for which reason she to sweeten a night-draught is the twentyalone carries the key of the cellar; and also eighth; she will fly to sunny Italy to-morrow to the rector of the parish, who believes her with the stable-boy. to be on a friendly visit at the grand house We have not yet quite reached this perwhich must always be in the centre of the fection of sensation writing, but are fairly on stories of this school. Medea Blenkinsop, or the way to it. And now let us look to Mrs. the Octogamist, or Pails of Blood—what a Wood, who, with all her faults, is a writer tale might be made of it! Think of the mere more worth notice than Miss Braddon, for difficulty between two husbands, the squire some illustrations of the sort of English that and rector of the parish,-how to keep them is suitable to a sensation novel. Verner's from knowing that they both had the same Pride is the name of a house, built by old wife? What floods of interesting lies the Mr. Verner to replace another on the same heroine would have to tell! This is the di-estate that was "a high, narrow old thing." rection in which Mrs. Wood must travel if she is to retain her popularity, she must not think to make a sensation with mere makebelieve bigamy. Let her study Punch, read in the profound pages of that philosopher the thrilling romance of " Mokeanna," and write something like that. We forget how many slops of fiction a sensation writer of the new school usually drops at a time, say three, then how delicious would be the exercise of ingenuity in threading the maze among three dozen or more husbands of three fair polygamist heroines. Before breakfast Medea Blenkinsop having, by great ingenuity, got her husband, the beadle, up in the belfry, stands below, pulls a rope, and crushes his

The old man had two sons, one his companion at home, the other, Colonel Sir Lionel, who had a boy at Eton. When the old man grew near to death Sir Lionel "was bade” get leave of absence if possible. But he also being dead, Verner's Pride was bequeathed to his brother, not to his son, the son of the eldest son, the youth at Eton, who becomes the hero of the story. The new master of Verner's Pride married" a widow lady of the name of Massingbird," who had two nearly grown-up sons, John and Frederick. These lived at Verner's Pride with young Lionel, the adopted son and natural heir of the property. It was Frederick Massingbird who seduced Rachel Frost; he is a sly villain with