a strolling actress, under the insane and preposterous notion that it is her mission. We do not say that art should be despised by the novelist; we only contend that it should not be polluted. We would have every novel a work of art, but the art should be employed on noble subjects, not on indifferent or disgraceful ones. If authors plead a mission to write, it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of inspiration when he paints a Madonna, but not when his brush stoops to a Cyprian or a Satyr. The Pharisees of old prayed unctuously in the market-places: so the George Sands of our day boast of their superior insight into the beautiful and true. We doubt whether both are not impudent hypocrites. The novel, which has proved the text to these remarks, belongs to a different, and, we hold, a better school. It originally appeared in Sharpe's London Magazine, and has just been republished by E. Littell & Co. Edith Kinnaird is a fiction which the most artistic mind will feel delight in perusing, yet one which the humblest will understand, and from which both may derive improvement. The heroine is neither a saint nor a fool, but a living woman; her sufferings spring from her errors, and are redeemed by her repentance: all is natural, beautiful, refreshing and noble. We rise from the perusal of such a fiction chastened and improved. Instead of rendering its readers dissatisfied with themselves, with their lot in life, with society, with every thing, this novel makes them feel that life is a battle, yet that victory is sure to reward all who combat aright--that after the dust and heat of the struggle comes the repose of satisfied duty. Yet there is nothing didactic in the volume. Its influence upon the heart is like that of the dew of heaven, silent, gradual, imperceptible. Is not this a proof of its intrinsic merit? Consuelo herself, as an ideal, is not more lovely than Edith Kinnaird, while the latter, in the eyes of truth, is infinitely the nobler woman. We hope to hear from the author again. Let us have more of such novels: there cannot be too many of them. How can noble and talented souls do more good than by furnishing the right kind of novels. Just as the old religious painters used to limn saints and Madonnas, let us now write works of artistic and moral fiction. _Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Boston: William D. Ticknor & Co._ 1 _vol._ 12_mo._