Foul Play. By CHARLES READE and DION BOUCICAULT. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

PERHAPS if Robinson Crusoe had not lived, Miss Rolleston and Mr. Penfold had never been born; but this is not certain; and, on the other hand, it is very clear that the plot of this bewitching novel is one of the freshest and most taking to be imagined. If we had the very hardest heart for fiction, and were as exacting in our novels as men are in their neighbors' morals, we think we could ask nothing better than that a young lady and gentleman of this period should be cast away together upon a tropical island in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, and there left for several months to the mutual dependence, the constant companionship, and the vicissitudes of soul inevitable from the situation. If we could desire anything more, it would be that this young lady should have been wrecked in going from Australia to be married in London, and that this young gentleman should have been an escaped ticket-of-leave man, refined, conscientious, and unjustly condemned to transportation for a crime committed by her betrothed ;and these blissful conditions we have exactly in "Foul Play." It seems almost too great a happiness when we have added to them the fact that the Rev. Mr. Penfold has already quarrelled with Miss Rolleston, who rejects his love, and believes him a slanderous and wicked villain, because he has accused her betrothed, and that he is put upon his most guarded behavior by this circumstance, until she herself consents to believe him good and just, even while clinging to her troth with his enemy.

Being a character of Mr. Reade's creation, it is not necessary to say that Helen Rolleston is a very natural and lovable woman, admirably illogical, cruel, sagacious, and generous. Through all her terrible disasters and thrilling adventures she is always a young lady, and no more abandoned on that far-away island by her exquisite breeding and the pretty conventions of her English girlhood, than she would be upon her native croquet - ground. A delicious charm is gained to the romance by the retention of

these society instincts and graces, which are made to harmonize rather than conflict with the exhibitions of a woman's greatness and self-devotion, when occasion calls forth those qualities. Helen's progress from prejudice to passion is tacit, and is always confessed more by some last effort of the former than by any expression of the latter. When she suspects that Penfold is only making her comfortable on the island because he intends her to pass the rest of her days there, and furiously upbraids him, she does his purpose a gross wrong, though she strikes at the heart of his unconscious desire, which nothing but her own love for him could reveal to her. She makes him a sublime reparation when at last the steamer appears which has come to seek her, and she will not kindle the signal-fire which he has built on the height, but which he cannot himself reach for illness; and so reveals that she dreads the rescue that shall divide them. It is fortunate for the author's invention, no doubt, that her father arrives upon the steamer just at that time; yet until the moment that her father takes her in his arms, nothing has soiled the purity of her dream of love. He finds in her lover an escaped ticket-of-leave man, and the shock of now beholding Penfold in this light for the first time naturally prompts those wild and most amusing reproaches that Helen heaps upon him for winning her heart under a false character; but she is heroic and quite as womanly again when she defends him against her father's blame, pours out all her love upon him, and puts a vehement and tremendous faith in his declaration that he is not a felon, but a martyr. With the chambermaid of the HollyTree Inn, witnessing the adieux of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, through the keyhole, the reader feels that "It's a shame to part 'em!" and does not care much for the ingenious story after Mr. Penfold is left alone on his island, though, of course, one reads on to the reunion of the lovers, and, in a minor way, enjoys all the plotting and punishment and reward that take place.

That part, however, Wilkie Collins could have done, while the island and its people are solely Mr. Reade's. This novelist, at all times brilliant and fascinating, has given

us of his best in "Foul Play," and in a story unburdened by the problem that crushed "Griffith Gaunt," and, dealing simply with the play of character amid beautiful scenes that give it the most novel and winning relief, has produced a work of which nothing but a superhuman dulness and obduracy could resist the sorcery.

The Earthly Paradise: A Poem. By WILLIAM MORRIS, Author of "The Life and Death of Jason." Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

THE trouvère, as distinct from the trouba dour, seemed almost disappearing from literature, when Mr. Morris revived the ancient line, or, to speak more exactly, the ancient thousand lines. He brings back to us the almost forgotten charm of mere narrative. We have lyric poets, and, while Browning lives, a dramatic poet; it is a comfort if we can have also a minstrel who can tell a story.

It is true, as Keats said, that there is a peculiar pleasure in a long poem, as in a meadow where one can wander about and pick flowers. One should cultivate a hopeful faith, like that of George Dyer, who bought a bulky volume of verse by an unknown writer, in the belief (so records Charles Lamb) that "there must be some good things in a poem of three thousand lines." That kindly critic would have found a true Elysium in the "Earthly Paradise."

If not so crowded as "Jason" with sweet, fresh, Chaucerian passages, it has more breadth and more maturity, and briefer intervals of dulness. Yet the word "Chaucerian" must be used with reluctance, and only to express a certain freshness of quality that no other phrase can indicate. Imitative these poems certainly are not; their simplicity is simple, whereas the simplicity of some poets is the last climax of their affectation. The atmosphere of Morris's poems is really healthy, though limited; and their mental action is direct and placid, not constrained.

The old legends of Cupid and Psyche, Atalanta, Alcestis and Pygmalion, are here rendered with new sweetness, interspersed with tales more modern. It is pleasant to see these immortal Greek stories reproduced in English verse; for, at the present rate of disappearance, who knows that there will be an American a hundred years hence

who can read a sentence of that beautiful old language, or to whom the names of "the Greeks and of Troy town" will be anything but an abomination? It is a comfort to think that the tales of the world's youth may take a new lease of life in these and other English rhymes, and so something of the ideal world be preserved for our grandchildren, as well as Herbert Spencer, and Greeley's "American Conflict."

Such themes are far more congenial to Morris than to Swinburne; for Greek poetry is at once simple and sensuous, and we come nearer to it when put on short allowance of the sensuous than when it runs riot and becomes unpleasantly conscious of its own nudity. Morris is also wiser in not attempting any imitation of the antique forms. Indeed, his poems belong in a world of their own, neither ancient nor modern, and touching remotely on all human interests. The lyrical poems interspersed between the legends are the only modern things, and even those are tender little bits of English landscape-painting that might have been executed centuries ago. His story-tellers and his listeners dwell'forever in a summer land, where youths and maidens may sit beneath their own vines and fig-trees, and even a poem of seven hundred pages cannot molest them nor make them afraid.

The Layman's Breviary, from the German of Leopold Schefer. Translated by CHARLES T. BROOKS. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1868.

A GERMAN critic declares that the "Layman's Breviary" has helped more souls to the understanding of themselves than any other book of German poetry. What is more remarkable for a devotional work in that language, no other book is needed to help souls to understand it. It is simple, as varied, and as attractive as if it were not in three hundred and sixty-five parts, and in blank verse from beginning to end.

Leopold Schefer, after wandering through the world with Prince Puckler Muskau, and writing seventy-three novels of musical and Oriental life, returned at last to Germany, and found in his home, his wife, and his child the true sources of inspiration. The novels are yet untranslated, perhaps untranslatable, but this volume of poetic meditations, after passing through twelve editions in the original, has already entered

on a new career of favor in this new land. Nothing can be more remote from all the technicalities of the creeds; but there is condensed into every meditation so much of practical wisdom, such simple feeling, such appreciation of life's daily blessings, such fresh and delicate poetic beauties, as must make it dearer to the reader with every day. It fell, fortunately, into the hands of one who has, perhaps, no equal among us, save Mr. Longfellow, in the translator's peculiar gifts, and who evades the quarrel between the literal and the poetic methods, by uniting them in one. In rendering these meditations, he has put into them the beauty of his own spirit and the sympathy of his own poetic mind. In such literary service laborare est orare.

Going to Jericho: or Sketches of Travel in Spain and the East. By JOHN FRANKLIN SWIFT. New York and San Francisco: A. Roman & Co.

THERE are many reasons why California, if she gives us literature at all, should give us something very racy and distinctive. The violent contrasts and extraordinary juxtapositions of the most unassorted persons and people which mark her history were not circumstances which, according to received ideas, invited to early literary production; but since books have been therein produced, it was scarcely possible that they should not in some way reflect the mental characteristics of that anomalous civilization on the Pacific. And, in fact, they have done so with a singular vividness and strength, and are so far all marked by that fantastic spirit of drollery which is the predominant mood of the popular American mind, in the face of great novelties and emergencies. The author of the John Phoenix papers first made known to us the peculiar flavor of the Pacific literature, and he still remains at the head of the California school of humorists. Next to him is Mr. Harte, of whose "Condensed Novelists" we have heretofore spoken in this place, and whose humor has more recently found expression in a volume of very amusing verse: performances betraying greater consciousness, and having less originality of form than the sole Phoenix's, but imbued with the same unmistakable Californianism. In Mr. Swift, like quaintness and extravagance appear in a book of

travel, carrying the reader through regions where almost the only new thing to be discovered and described is the traveller himself. Mr. Swift, therefore, makes a narrative of almost purely personal adventure, and lets us off with very little information. What he does give is again of personal character, and relates chiefly to interviews with President Adams of the American colony at Jaffa, with Abd-el-Kader and Lady Hester Stanhope, and is acceptable enough if you set aside some questions of taste. "Eothen" has pitched the pipe for all sarcastic travellers visiting the Holy Places, but Mr. Swift arranges the old air with much originality, and makes his reader laugh with a new though somewhat guilty pleasure, at fun which hardly stops short of sacred memories, and is at other times too lawless.

The best chapters in his book are those sketching some episodes of Spanish travel. The account of the bull-fight at Madrid is one of the most surprising of these, it is both graphic and interesting, and thus differs from most efforts upon that shamelessly tattered old topic, in reading which you always regret that some one of the bulls had not made it a point to get at and gore the tourist intending to celebrate the spectacle. "My first Step in Crime," in which our traveller recounts his adventures in ridding himself of the bad money passed upon him in Spain, is very amusing, with occasional excess and abandon which does not seem quite necessary to the expression of humor, but which seems again quite Californian.

Romantic and Scriptural scenes are generally looked at from the same point of view, and discussed in the light of San Francisco associations, — sometimes with a delightful mock newspaper-seriousness, and a habit of unexpected allusion to American politics and society. No one could enjoy the shams and absurdities of travel so keenly as Mr. Swift does, without also appreciating its other aspects; and in spite of the levity of the book we are aware, not only of sound common sense, but of sympathy with much that is fine and good in the things seen. Still, the latter faculty is subordinated, and so we have a book in which the disposition to droll not only betrays the author into passages of very questionable taste, but at last fatigues the reader.

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in heaven to witness your sincerity, you. . . . do now take this woman whose hand you hold choosing her alone from all the world to be your lawfully wedded wife. You trust her as your best earthly friend. You promise to love, to cherish, and to protect her; to be considerate of her happiness in your plans of life; to cultivate for her sake all manly virtues; and in all things to seek her welfare as you seek your own. You pledge yourself thus honorably to her, to be her husband in good faith, so long as the providence of God shall spare you to each other.

"In like manner, looking to your Heavenly Father for his blessing, you.... do now receive this man, whose hand you hold, to be your lawfully wedded husband. You choose him from all the world as he has chosen you. You pledge your trust to him as your best earthly friend. You promise to love, to comfort, and to honor him; to cultivate for his sake all womanly graces; to guard his reputation, and assist him in his life's work; and in all things to esteem his happiness as your own. You give yourself thus trustfully to him, to be his wife in good faith, so long as the providence of God shall spare you to each other."

When Harrie lifted her shining eyes to say, "I do!" the two little happy words rang through the silent room like a silver bell; they would have tinkled in your ears for weeks to come if you

had heard them.

I have been thus particular in noting the words of the service, partly because they pleased me, partly because I have since had some occasion to recall them, and partly because I remember having wondered, at the time, how many married men and women of your and my acquaintance, if honestly subjecting their union to the test and full interpretations and remotest bearing of such vows as these, could live in the sight of God and man as "lawfully wedded" husband and wife.

Weddings are always very sad things to me; as much sadder than burials as the beginning of life should be sadder

The readiness

than the end of it. with which young girls will flit out of a tried, proved, happy home into the sole care and keeping of a man whom they have known three months, six, twelve, I do not profess to understand. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. But that may be because I am fifty-five, an old maid, and have spent twenty years. in boarding-houses.

A woman reads the graces of a man at sight. His faults she cannot thoroughly detect till she has been for years his wife. And his faults are so much more serious a matter to her than hers to him!

I was thinking of this the day before the wedding. I had stepped in from the kitchen to ask Mrs. Bird about the salad, when I came abruptly, at the door of the sitting-room, upon as choice a picture as one is likely to see.

The doors were open through the house, and the wind swept in and out. A scarlet woodbine swung lazily back and forth beyond the window. Dimples of light burned through it, dotting the carpet and the black-and-white marbled oilcloth of the hall. Beyond, in the little front parlor, framed in by the series of doorways, was Harrie, all in a cloud of white. It floated about her with an idle, wavelike motion. She had a veil like fretted pearls through which her tinted arm shone faintly, and the shadow of a single scarlet leaf trembled through a curtain upon her forehead.

Her mother, crying a little, as mothers will cry the day before the wedding, was smoothing with tender touch a tiny crease upon the cloud; a bridesmaid or two sat chattering on the floor; gloves, and favors, and flowers, and bits of lace like hoar-frost, lay scattered about; and the whole was repictured and reflected and reshaded in the great old-fashioned mirrors before which Harrie turned herself about.

It seemed a pity that Myron Sharpe should miss that, so I called him in from the porch where he sat reading Stuart Mill on Liberty.

If you form your own opinion of a