are made up of the struggles of the young men with their fate, but chiefly of the endeavors of the elder, Philip, to demonstrate the marriage and redeem the good name of his mother. This he finally accomplishes, (after her death, and after a host of vicissitudes experienced in his own person) by the accidental return of William Smith, and by the discovery of an additional witness in Morgan Jones, who made the extract from the register, and to whom the rightful heir is guided by this long-sought document itself, obtained from the hands of Robert Beaufort, (who had found it in the bureau,) through the instrumentality of one Fanny, the heroine, and in the end the wife of the hero. We do not give this as the plot of “Night and Morning,” but as the ground-work of the plot; which latter, woven from the incidents above mentioned, is in itself exceedingly complex. The ground-work, as will be seen, is of no very original character—it is even absurdly common-place. We are not asserting too much when we say that every second novel since the flood has turned upon some series of hopeless efforts, either to establish legitimacy, or to prove a will, or to get possession of a great sum of money most unjustly withheld, or to find out a ragamuffin of a father, who had been much better left unfound. But, saying nothing of the basis upon which this story has been erected, the story itself is, in many respects, worthy its contriver. The word “plot,” as commonly accepted, conveys but an indefinite meaning. Most persons think of it as of simple _complexity_; and into this error even so fine a critic as Augustus William Schlegel has obviously fallen, when he confounds its idea with that of the mere _intrigue_ in which the Spanish dramas of Cervantes and Calderon abound. But the greatest involution of incident will not result in plot; which, properly defined, is _that in which no part can be displaced without ruin to the whole_. It may be described as a building so dependently constructed, that to change the position of a single brick is to overthrow the entire fabric. In this definition and description, we of course refer only to that infinite perfection which the true artist bears ever in mind—that unattainable goal to which his eyes are always directed, but of the possibility of attaining which he still endeavors, if wise, to cheat himself into the belief. The reading world, however, is satisfied with a less rigid construction of the term. It is content to think that plot a good one, in which none of the _leading_ incidents can be _removed_ without _detriment_ to the mass. Here indeed is a material difference; and in this view of the case the plot of “Night and Morning” is decidedly excellent. Speaking comparatively, and in regard to stories similarly composed, it is one of the best. This the author has evidently designed to make it. For this purpose he has taxed his powers to the utmost. Every page bears marks of excessive elaboration,