Fiction they undoubtedly are, in some sense; but fiction of some such nature—far be it from me to write profanely—as the parables of our ever-blessed Saviour, and in their humbler sphere and lesser degree improvable to the same good end. There is not one line in either from which any mental alchemy could extract one grain of evil counsel or unholy thought; on the contrary, there is not one which prompts not to good works, and faith, and reliance in the mercy and justice of the Most High. After the Holy Bible itself, we are cognizant of no reading which may be put more fitly into the innocent hands of a beloved daughter on a Sunday afternoon, than either of these beautiful and touching little volumes; and to render the effects more certain, as more salutary, so far is there from being any effort or straining after religionism, moralizing or lay-preaching, so apt to frustrate their own ends, that the whole tenor of each flows so naturally and with so much probability forward, the thinkings, doings and speakings of the actors springing so spontaneously from the causes, that we read on enthralled, engrossed, with a tear often stealing to the eye, hardly able to believe that we are not perusing the real memoirs of real authors; and think nothing of the moral until the book is closed and the paramount interest ended. It is an evil sign in relation to the influence and tone of the press-criticism of any countries, when we find the vulgar absurdities and exaggerations of Cockton, the trivial and overdone flippancies of Albert Smith, or even the brilliant eccentricities of Thackeray, over-lauded to the skies, while such gems of nature, verisimilitude and poesy, as these little volumes, creep forward, almost unushered, timid and unknown to fame, into the gradual favor of the public. In one word, I know not nor conjecture to what dead or living author, male or female, of either hemisphere they may be attributed; but I do know there is not one—no! not Sir Walter himself—who would not derive fresh reputation from their authorship; and in order to substantiate this my opinion, I proceed to extract somewhat largely from the former work, which—although I have hitherto spoken of them in general terms, and in common, as cognate compositions, and I doubt not by the same pen—is by many degrees the abler and more perfect, as far as the more agreeable and fascinating volume. There is not a syllable in it which might not have been penned in her _libellus_ by sweet Margaret More, bravest and best of English daughters—not one, which did not probably, in some shape or other, pass through her living brain—not one, to make an end of it, which, as we read, we do not implicitly believe, for the moment, to be of her actual penning.