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an extent that almost amounts to caricature. Thus, the principal 

 character is a sort of mild angelic being, of whom virtue and harm- 

 lessness are the most prominent features ; a second is all brutality ; a 

 third is all fun ; a fourth vulgar sensuality ; a fifth selfishness ; and 

 a sixth low cunning. 



With this last writer, we have a more serious difference still. In his 

 fictitious narratives, he is not merely the witness recording facts, the pub- 

 lic he'ing quasi jurors and auditors, but he is also an advocate giving the 

 facts a peculiar colouring. He seems in general to write down the men, 

 and up the women ; and though we smile at the tendency, it is sometimes 

 a matter of serious import. On the principle of pride, for example, in the 

 husband and father it is highly objectionable and amounts to an unpar- 

 donable crime ; in the wife it is a fact without comment, or rather an 

 additional jewel in her coronet. The father, too, loves one child more 

 than another ; and though it is seen incidentally that no wrong is done to 

 to either, this is a second crime of immense magnitude. The writer seems 

 forget a great fact in human nature, that it is scarcely possible to estimate 

 two persons equally, either from some difference in their intrinsic value, 

 or from the imperfection of our judgment. The child values his parents 

 differently ; the brother his brothers and sisters ; the friend his friends ; 

 the teacher his pupils ; and the pupil his teachers. In addition to this, 

 the nations of the world give precedence to sons who continue the name 

 and family, not to daughters; and even among sons, precedence is given 

 to the eldest. If the much-abused father were really in error, there is a 

 very large number who must be put into the indictment, not excepting, 

 we suspect, the writer himself. A patriarch regarded with peculiar affec- 

 tion the children of one mother, and even one of her two sons ; nor is a 

 higher example wanting, where among twelve there was a beloved 

 disciple. Yet, with all this apparent sensitiveness on the subject of 

 right and wrong, the book contains some instances of remarkable laxity. 

 There is no condemnation of the lady who was utterly careless as to the 

 comfort or enjoyment of the guests within her husband s threshold. 

 And the last fatal step which a wife can take, is recorded simply as a 

 fact ; without the disapprobation which the writer had so freely expressed 

 on trifling matters before, though it almost entailed suicide on her dis- 

 tracted husband. There is an opening left, too, for the obvious inference 

 which many would not fail to dmw, that when a father is worked up to 

 madness by the greatest wrong which human nature can sustain, when 

 he has strong reason to believe that his daughter is privy to his degra- 

 dation, when his life and fortune are to him but as a drop in the bucket, 

 yet if he should dare to give that daughter a hasty stroke with the hand, 

 she is wan-anted in leaving the shelter of the paternal roof, and seeking 



