sickening, and the most transparent. Mr. Ainsworth having thus earned for himself the kind of renown which “Crichton” could establish with the rabble, made his next appearance before that rabble with “Jack Sheppard.” Seeing what we have just seen, we should by no means think it wonderful that this romance threw into the greatest astonishment the little critics who so belauded the one preceding. They could not understand it at all. They would not believe that the same author had written both. Thus they condemned it in loud terms. The Magazine before alluded to, styles it, in round terms, “the most corrupt, flat, and vulgar fabrication in the English language . . . a disgrace to the literature of the day.” Corrupt and vulgar it undoubtedly is, but it is by no means so _flat_ (if we understand the critic’s idea of the term) as the “Crichton” to which it is considered so terribly inferior. By “_flat_” we presume “uninteresting” is intended. To us, at least, no novel was less _interesting_ than “Crichton,” and the only interest which it _could_ have had for any reader must have arisen from admiration excited by the apparently miraculous _learning_ of the plagiarist, and from the air of owlish profundity which he contrives to throw over the work. The interest, if any, must have had regard to the author and not to his book. Viewed as a work of art, and without reference to any supposed moral or immoral tendencies, (things with which the critic has nothing to do) “Jack Sheppard” is by no means the _very_ wretched composition which some gentlemen would have us believe. Its condemnation has been brought about by the revulsion consequent upon the exaggerated estimate of “Crichton.” It is altogether a much better book than “Crichton.” Although its incidents are improbable—(the frequent miraculous escapes of the hero, for instance, without competent means) still they are not, as in “Crichton,” at the same time inconsequential. Admitting the facts, these facts hang together sufficiently well. Nor is there any bombast of style; this negative merit, to be sure, being no merit of the author’s, but an enforced one resulting from the subject. The chief defect of the work is a radical one, the nature and effect of which we were at some pains to point out in a late notice of Captain Marryatt’s “Poacher.” The story being, no doubt, written to order, for Magazine purposes, and in a violent hurry, has been scrambled through by means of _incident_ solely. It is totally wanting in the _autorial comment_. The writer never pauses to speak, in his own person, of what is going on. It is possible to have too much of this comment; but it is far easier to have too little. The most tedious books, _ceteris paribus_, are those which have none at all. “Sir Charles Grandison,” “Clarissa Harlowe,” and the “Ernest Maltravers” of Bulwer embody instances of its superabundance. The genius of the author of “Pelham” is in nothing more evident than in the interest which