We do not mean _to find fault_ with the class of performances of which “Stanley Thorn” is one. Whatever tends to the amusement of man tends to his benefit. Aristotle, with singular assurance, has declared poetry the most philosophical of all writing, (_spoudiotaton kai philosophikotaton genos_) defending it principally upon that score. He seems to think,—and many following him, have thought—that the end of all literature should be instruction—a favorite dogma of the school of Wordsworth. But it is a truism that the end of our existence is happiness. If so, the end of every separate aim of our existence—of every thing connected with our existence, should be still—happiness. Therefore, the end of instruction should be happiness—and happiness, what is it but the extent or duration of pleasure?—therefore, the end of instruction should be pleasure. But the cant of the Lakists would establish the exact converse, and make the end of all pleasure instruction. In fact, _ceteris paribus_, he who pleases is of more importance to his fellow man than he who instructs, since the _dulce_ is alone the _utile_, and pleasure is the end already attained, which instruction is merely the means of attaining. It will be said that Wordsworth, with Aristotle, has reference to instruction with eternity in view; but either such cannot be the tendency of his argument, or he is laboring at a sad disadvantage; for his works—or at least those of his school—are professedly to be understood by the few, and it is the many who stand in need of salvation. Thus the moralist’s parade of measures would be as completely thrown away as are those of the devil in “Melmoth,” who plots and counterplots through three octavo volumes for the entrapment of one or two souls, while any common devil would have demolished one or two thousand. When, therefore, we assert that these practical-joke publications are not “literature,” because not “thoughtful” in any degree, we must not be understood as objecting to the thing in itself, but to its claim upon our attention as critic. Dr.—what is his name?—strings together a number of facts or fancies which, when printed, answer the laudable purpose of amusing a very large, if not a very respectable number of people. To this proceeding upon the part of the Doctor—or on the part of his imitator, Mr. Jeremy Stockton, the author of “Valentine Vox,” we _can_ have no objection whatever. His _books_ do not please _us_. We will not read them. Still less shall we speak of them seriously as _books_. Being in no respect works of art, they neither deserve, nor are amenable to criticism. “Stanley Thorn” may be described, in brief, as a collection, rather than as a series, of practical haps and mishaps, befalling a young man very badly brought up by his mother. He flogs his father with a codfish, and does other similar things. We have no fault to find with him whatever except that, in the end, he _does not_ come to the gallows.