'This is not a very plossant story. It is, of course, sonsatibnal enough Dick' Donovan's novels, we believe, generally are; but the one before us leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. The dark side of human nature—its meanness and its crimes—is so promi-nantly to the fore, and thoro is so little to relieve the blackness. The plot is a rather far-fetched one, and although it worked out with the author's aooussome crime for which Thurtell extreme pouslty of the law in front of Hertford gaol "in presence of an enormous crowd of tens of thousands of persons" was indeed s terrible and strange one, and it is recounted with the graphic realism of one who knows how to thrill his readers with such descriptions. It is pleasant and refreshing, after the sombre and sordid soenes—the cheating and lying and meanness—of the preceding chapters, to read in the concluding one about the lifting of the shadows", the happy. marriages of some whose' chequered careers of sorrow and misfortune we have been sympathetically following.
The cover of the volume is hideous fantastic expressions s "'parvanimity "patibulary", "fulgid radiance", and soon, is not conducive to clearness. The English lsngusge is rich and Or
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.