This is one of the most deservedly attractive novels of the past season; and the good sense with which it abounds, ought to insure it extensive circulation. It has none of the affectation or presumptuousness of "fashionable" literature; but is at once a rational picture of that order of society to which its characters belong, and a just satire on the _superior_ vices of the wealthy and the great. The author is evidently no servile respecter of either of the latter classes, for which reason, his work is the more estimable, and is a picture of _real_ life, whereas fashion at best lends but a disguise, or artificial colouring to the actions of men, and thus renders them the less important to the world, and less to be depended on as scenes and portraitures of human character. The former will, however, stand as lasting records of the men and manners of the age in which they were drawn, whilst the latter, being in their own day but caricatures of life, will, in course of time, fade and lose their interest, and at length become levelled with the mere ephemera, or day-flies of literature. It is true that novel-writing has, within the last sixteen, or eighteen years, attained a much higher rank than it hitherto enjoyed; but it should be remembered that this superiority has not been grounded in mawkish records of the fashionable follies of high life, such as my Lord Duke, or my Lady Bab, might indite below stairs, for the amusement of those in the drawing-room; on the contrary, it was founded in portraits and pictures of human nature, strengthened by historical, or matter-of-fact interest, and stripped of the trickery of fancy and romance; whereas, the chronicles of fashion are little better than the vagaries of an eccentric few, who bear the same proportion to the general mass of society, that the princes, heroes, and statesmen of history do to the whole world. This is a fallacy of which thousands of Bath and Cheltenham novel-readers are not yet aware, and which the listless _Dangles_ of Brighton and Margate have yet to learn, ere they can hope to arrive at a correct estimate of human nature; but to such readers we cordially recommend _Penelope_ as the best corrective we can prescribe for the bile of fashionable prejudice, or the nausea arising from overstrained fiction, modified as it is to the romance of real life.