knowledge of method which are needed to give even great power its value. Maryx too is well represented, and everywhere, even when the captious would complain of too much melodrama, there are scenes and bits of talk that are good because they are natural. In time justice will be done to the ability of a writer who, when the short-hand report of talk over tea-cups was the fashion, was able to rise above such mechanical handiwork and write a story full of passion. Faulty, tawdry and theatrical as much of Ouida's writing is, she does know--and knowing she at times describes--genuine passion, as she has done here. Much as she has spun out the tale, it is a fine one, and an admirable example of her best side. The revenge that Ariadne makes in carving a statue of Hilarion as he seemed to her, so that even he felt some shame at his inferiority to her conception of him, is impressive. The way, too, in which Rome is kept as a background for all the events described is worthy of notice. But here as elsewhere the main fault is this, which is best described in her own characteristic language: "How one wishes that they had told us the fate of Nausicaa! When she leaned against the pillar and bade her farewell to the great wanderer, we know her heart was heavy: never again could she play by the shore glad-hearted with her maidens: when she had passed, that day, out between the silver dogs of Hephæstus, through the west wind and the pomegranate-blossoms, to the sea, she had left her happy youth behind her. So much we feel sure of, but we would fain know more. Were it a modern poem, how it would be amplified! how much we should hear of her conflict of silence and sorrow! No modern would have the coldness to leave her there, leaning against the column in Alcinöus's hall, and never add a word of her fate. But that is our weakness: we cannot 'break off the laurel-bough' shortly and sharply, unburnt, as they did of old." Not only is she unable to "break off the laurel-bough:" she decks it with gewgaws and tinsel; she sets the reader's teeth on edge with references to the "Scipii" and to the "gens Quintilii," and never lets pass a chance to bring some bit of ancient or mediæval Roman history into the story, which is also weighed down with superfluous sentiment. It would be hard to find a writer more affected by the "weakness" of redundant description and expression. Then, too, the glorification of all her characters, her way of giving them unlimited wealth, beauty or genius, is like that play of the imagination of children which they exhibit by talking of the time when they will be rich and will give one another hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every one of the longer novels is marred by this fictitious extravagance: it is in her short stories alone that she manages to touch the earth, and in them her pathos is genuine and direct. THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY. A KENTUCKY DUEL. TWO PARTS.--II. CHAPTER IV.