consenting to become the wife of a man she disliked, is in despair at finding how unnecessarily she has sacrificed herself. But the ceremony is over, and she has no alternative but resignation to her lot. That same evening, however, the castle, which is in the vicinity of Smolensko, is surprised by Rasinski, who, under cover of the darkness, has forded the Dnieper with his horsemen. On the threshold of the bridal chamber, Ochalskoi is startled by pistol-shots. The alarm-bell rings, the confusion is terrific. The principal tenants of the castle escape into the adjacent forest, but, in covering the retreat, Ochalskoi is mortally wounded. From Smolensko, Russian troops hurry out to repel the Poles, and Rasinski recrosses the river with his regiment, in whose ranks rides Ludwig, little suspecting how near he has been to the mistress of his heart. Having thus obligingly killed off the husband, before he had _de facto_ become entitled to the name, Mr Rellstab evidently intends ultimately rewarding the sufferings of Bianca, and the constancy of her German lover. There is still a slight difficulty in the way of this desirable consummation. Bernard, Ludwig's faithful friend, has also a hankering after the lady, whom he has seen in a London theatre, and surreptitiously sketched. He sacrifices himself to friendship, and is rewarded by the discovery that Bianca is his sister. Whereupon he finds out that he is in love with Marie, Ludwig's sister, and she, who has been wooed by Rasinski, and whose sole objection to the gallant Pole is the fact of his fighting in the French ranks, favours the suit of Bernard, whose temporary service under the tricolor was the consequence of his affection for her brother, and who atones his brief alliance with Frenchmen by taking a gallant part against them in the subsequent campaigns of 1813-15. Here, however, we are again anticipating--jumping from the middle of the second to the end of the fourth volume. We will presently retrace our steps for an extract or two. Just after the fight at Smolensko, which the Russians abandoned in the night, and the French took possession of on the 18th August, Ludwig receives a letter informing him of his mother's death, and is plunged into the deepest distress. We mention this incident, which, although its immediate cause is connected with the plot of the book, is, upon the whole, unimportant, merely because it gives us an opportunity of referring to a practice common amongst foreign writers, especially amongst German ones, and which occurs in "1812" more frequently than we should have expected to have found it in the production of a writer usually so manly as Mr Rellstab. We allude to the exorbitant allowance of hugging and kissing that goes on between the male characters of the romance. We have no objection to any decent amount of osculation, so long as the parties are of different sexes; we can even pardon the rather too