Mr. Bunce, the author of several charmingly written works of the essay character, among which may be mentioned “Bachelor Bluff,” “My House an Ideal,”etc., again challenges the critical attention of the intelligent reading public, in a form this time which will command wider interest—the novel. The “Adventures of Timias Terrystone” is in no sense a romance; it is not a story of action, or in the least melodramatic; it is not in any wide or deep sense a novel of character, though the personages have well-marked individualities and act consistently with them. So far as the actual life depicted is concerned, the story glides pleasantly over the surface of things, not professing or caring to deal with the more deep and startling issues of life, but touching the facts of every-day happening with a light and graceful hand, and showing a very keen sensibility to the fresh and lovely aspects of youth. The hero is a young artist who, being a waif, did not know his own parentage, and being brought up in a very unconventional way, disdains even at the last, when he discovers his ancestry, all pride of birth and family. The adventures of the youthful painter, though chiefly of an amatory character, as his great personal beauty and freshness of character appear to exercise a great charm over the other sex, are manifold, and both interesting and amusing, he being a more refined and purer Gil Blas. But we doubt whether the main interest will be found in the mere story, though novel-readers will not go amiss of genuine enjoyment in this way. In the mouth of one of the characters, a bluff, easy-going, wandering Bohemian, our author places a great number of keen, incisive, critical, or eloquent observations, as the case may be. These thoughts are so full of pith that they can hardly fail to be widely quoted, and our readers will not have to draw on their good nature to pardon us if we give them some of these well-spiced plums: “A man who goes through the world with his eyes open learns something at every step; but one who immerses himself in a library simply converts himself into a catalogue.... What are reading and writing, anyway, but a prejudice of society? Do men get more character, more self-reliance, greater capacity for dealing with the problems of life, by filtering through the brain the dreams of the poets and the philosophers? I tell you that when our boys should be scouring through the woods, rolling down-hill, scaling the mountains, making themselves splendid young Apollos, we shut them up in a deadly school-room, which soon drives the color out of their cheeks, vigor out of their limbs, pluck out of their hearts, and snap out of their brains. Civilization is a bundle of absurdities—it is worse, it is a upas-tree, that is fast poisoning the race.” * * * * *