The Swiss Heiress should be read by all who have nothing better to do. We are patient, and having gone through the whole book with the most dogged determination, are now enabled to pronounce it one of the most solemn of farces. Let us see if it be not possible to give some idea of the plot. It is the year 1780, and “the attention of the reader is directed, first, to a Castle whose proud battlements rise amidst the pines and firs of the Swiss mountains, while, at its base, roll the waters of Lake Geneva,” and, second, to the sun which is setting somewhat more slowly than usual, because he is “unwilling to terminate the natal day of the young heiress of the Baron de Rheinswald, the wealthy proprietor of Montargis castle, and its beautiful environs.” We are thus left to infer—putting the two sentences and circumstances in apposition—that the Montargis Castle where dwells the young heiress of the Baron de Rheinswald, is neither more nor less than the identical castle “with the proud battlements” et cetera, that “rises amid the pines and firs” and so forth, of the “Swiss Mountains and the Lake of Geneva” and all that. However this may be, the Baron de Rheinswald is a “Catholic of high repute” who “early in life marries a lady of great wealth, a member of his own church, actuated by ambition”—that is to say, there was either something or somebody “actuated by ambition,” but we shall _not_ say whether it was a lady or a church. The lady (or perhaps now the church) “lived but five years after the union, and at her death earnestly and solemnly implored that her only son might be devoted to the priesthood.” The lady, or the church (let us reconcile the difficulty by calling the thing “Mother Church”) being thus deceased, the bereaved Baron marries a second wife. She being a protestant however, the high contracting parties sign an instrument by which it is agreed “that the eldest child shall be educated by the mother's direction, a protestant, the second be subject to the father's will and a catholic, and thus alternately with all their children.” This, it must be allowed is a contrivance well adapted for effect. Only think of the interesting little creatures all taking it “turn about!” What fights, too, they will have, when breeched, over their prayer-books and bread-and-butter! Our author pauses in horror at anticipated consequences, and takes this excellent opportunity of repeating what “a late writer” (a great friend of his by the bye) says in regard to “chemical combinations” and “opposite properties.”