Talk of novel-writers--this is the great master of fiction--the man who brings the product of imagination to the real test of credibility--the actual interest of his public. Let him fail in his description, his narrative, the progress of his events, or their probability, and he is ruined at once. He must not alone arrange the circumstances of his story, but he must perform the hero, and that, too, as we saw lately at Padua, without any adventitious aid of dress or costume. I can fancy what a sorry figure some of our popular tale-writers would present if they had to appeal to an innkeeper with this poor story of their luggage lost in the Danube. What a contempt the rascal must have had for Italian notions of geography, too, when he adopted a river so remote from where he stood! And yet I’d swear he was as cool, as collected, and as self-sustained at that moment, as ever was Mr Gladstone in the House as he rose to move a motion of supply. Well, he is in Padua now, doubtless dreaming of fresh conquests, and not impossibly speculating on a world whose gullibility is indeed infinite, and which actually seems to take the same pleasure in being cheated in Fact as it does in being deceived in Fiction. Who knows if the time is not coming when, instead of sending a box of new novels to the country, some Mr Mudie will despatch one of these R. N. F. folk by a fast train, with a line to say, “A great success: his Belgian rogueries most amusing; the exploit at Madrid equal to anything in ‘Gil Bias’.” GÀRIBÀLDI We had a very witty Judge in Ireland, who was not very scrupulous about giving hard knocks to his brothers on the bench, and who, in delivering a judgment in a cause, found that he was to give the casting-vote between his two colleagues, who were diametrically opposed to each other, and who had taken great pains to lay down the reasons for their several opinions at considerable length. “It now comes to my turn,” said he, “to declare my view of this case, and fortunately I can afford to be brief. I agree with my brother B. from the irresistible force of the admirable argument of my brother M.”