A secluded life and narrow range of observation mainly account for what of morbidness and lack of geniality marks these works. Charlotte's private correspondence, when printed precisely as written and not clipped or garbled, shows distinctly a sunny side, and justifies the conclusion that the early life of the sisters was "unquestionably peaceful, happy and wholesome." That this should be the fact adds to our enjoyment of the novels. Our confidence in, and consequent admiration of, a powerful picture are the more assured by our knowledge that the touch under which it grew was not cramped or warped by suffering. Had Charlotte Bronte's literary life been prolonged under the new conditions opened to her by her sudden fame, we have small reason to suppose that she would have created a more telling character than Rochester, though she would not have exhausted her powers in the microscopic delineation of commonplace people which constitutes the province of her most popular female successor. She would have portrayed stronger subjects in a more vigorous and incisive style. Some critical remarks in her few letters from London are strikingly direct and acute. Thackeray, Mrs. Browning, Turner and Macready come in for a few lines each which hit them to the life. She possessed the critical temperament and faculty. The metropolitan field suited to its best exercise she was, alas! destined never to enter. Kismet. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers. As long as there are readers who care for a novel packed from cover to cover with interesting scenes of a promising flirtation that ripens into enthusiastic love-making by which three persons are in turn made miserable, so long such books as _Kismet_ will be liked. The scene of the story is the Nile, the characters are for the most part voyagers on that river, and descriptions of the wonders that line its shores make an imposing background to the lightness of the incidents. This setting of the story makes the book really impressive: the scenery is brought before the reader not in the way a topographical map is constructed, but by dexterous touches which show that the anonymous author can rise above recording the vicissitudes of a more or less conventional courtship. But a good many writers have ship-wrecked just at that which seems so easy and is really so hard. All the good scenery in the world will not make a dull novel entertaining; but when, as is the case here, the story is interesting, the reader can only be grateful for everything thrown in over measure. This story is clever, because it describes so well the way in which a young woman who at the beginning of the tale is engaged to a young painter, George Ferris, whom she does not really love, learns a good deal about that passion when she meets the more fascinating Arthur Livingston on the Nile, and travels for a long time in his company. This Livingston, too, is not the conventional hero whose success wins the