This volume belongs to a series of narratives intended to illustrate Mrs. Ritchie's experiences of theatrical life, and especially to do justice to the many admirable people who have adopted the stage as a profession. Though it has many defects, in respect to plot and characterization, it seems to us the most charming in style and beautiful in sentiment of Mrs. Ritchie's works. The two sisters, the "twin roses," are, we believe, drawn from life; but the author's own imagination has enveloped them in an atmosphere of romantic sweetness, and their qualities are fondly exaggerated into something like unreality. They seem to have been first idolized and then idealized, but never realized. Still, the most beautiful and tender passages of the whole book are those in which they are lovingly portrayed. The scenes in the theatre are generally excellent. The perils, pains, pleasures, failures, and triumphs of the actor's life are well described. The defect, which especially mars the latter portion of the volume, is the absence of any artistic reason for the numerous descriptions of scenery which are introduced. The tourist and the novelist do not happily combine. Still, the sentiment of the book is so pure, fresh, and artless, its moral tone so high, its style so rich and melodious, and its purpose so charitable and good, that the reader is kept in pleased attention to the end, and lays it down with regret. * * * * * EDITORIAL NOTE. In our review of Parton's Life of Burr, published in the March number, the following passage occurs, as a quotation from that work:--"Hamilton probably implanted a dislike for Burr in Washington's breast." Upon this the author of the biography has had the effrontery to bring against us a charge of _forgery_. He affirms that neither the sentence above quoted nor any resembling it can be found in his book. Mr. Parton, speaking of Washington's refusal to nominate Burr to the French mission, (p. 197,) speaks of the President's dislike for him; and, endeavoring to account for it, says: "Reflecting upon this circumstance, the idea will occur to the individual long immersed in the reading of that period, _that this invincible dislike of Colonel Burr was perhaps implanted, certainly nourished, in the mind of General Washington by his useful friend and adherent, Alexander Hamilton."_ We do not wonder that Mr. Parton should have been annoyed by so damaging a criticism of his book, but we can account for his forgetfulness only by supposing that he has been so long "immersed in the reading of that period" as to have arrived nearly at the drowning-point of insensibility. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858, by Various