There is in this last line a dark, grim, sardonic appreciation of the advantages which common minds have over those that, like the poet's own, have to endure the splendid miseries of genius,--a dark moodiness, like that of a tame Byron remorsefully recalling a wild debauch upon green tea,--that is deliciously funny. Page 230.--The heroine, who is less poetical by far than her rough servitor, says,-- "Carl! not for all the golden sand Of famed Pactolus, would I hurt Thy feelings; _'tis my wont to blurt_ My humour thus." Page 298.--The hero, who is hardly more romantic than the heroine, has married his own sister:-- "Lord Hubart gazed with steady eye And arms still folded, on old Carl-- 'Here is, i' faith, a pretty snarl To be unwound'--but his reply Was cut short," etc., etc. In fact, the great objection to Lord Hubart, as may be inferred from the above-quoted passage, is, that he is hopelessly vulgar. We are loath to say so, because of our respect for English aristocracy; but English aristocracy, truth compels us to observe, cuts no great figure on our American stage or in our American literature. In short, this is a very silly book. It abounds in trite moralizing, for instances of which we will merely refer the reader to pp. 65, 131, and 299. The author remarks exultingly, in his Introduction, that his is comparatively an uncultivated mind, We can only say, we should think so! Ignorance is plentiful everywhere, but it really seems as if it were reserved for some of our American writers to display in its finest specimens ignorance vaunting its own deficiencies. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about "uncultivated minds": some men are eminent in spite of being uncultivated; but no man was ever eminent because he was uncultivated. Some instances of a lamentable misuse of language in "Hester" we give below. Page 16,-- "They would have won implicit sway." Page 53,-- "By the nonce!" Evidently thinking of the phrase, "for the nonce,"--meaning, for the occasion. In the text, "by the nonce" is an oath! Page 71,-- "And he some squire of low behest." Page 221,-- "and when is won At last the longed-for rubicon." Page 256,--the use of the word "denizens." Page 262,-- "None may their evil doing shirk! That wrong, in any shape, will bring, Or soon or late, its _meted sting_." Page 313,-- "as gnats, which sometimes sting Their life away when rankled."