the late Mr. Smallweed would have considered a thorough "shaking-up?" "If they were all starving," declares the energetic narrator, "she could not earn a cent in any way whatever, so utterly helpless is this fine Southern lady. She will not sleep, unless the light is kept burning all night in her room, for fear something might happen'; and when a slight matter crosses her feelings, she lies in bed for several days." Tut, tut, dear lady! surely this once thy zeal hath outrun thy discretion. Clement L. Vallandigham's public course is a proper target for all loyal shafts, but prithee let the poor lady, his wife, remain in peace, such peace as she can command. It is bad enough for her to be his wife, without being overborne with the additional burden of her own personal foibles. One can be daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, “never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, by his side among the flowers." She will keep a light burning in her room, forsooth. Have we not all our pet hobgoblins? We

know an excellent woman who once sat curled up in an arm-chair all night for fear of a mouse! And is it not a well-understood thing that nothing so baffles midnight burglars as a burning candle? "When a light matter crosses her feelings, she lies in bed for several days." Infinitely better than to go sulking about the house with that "injured-innocence" air which makes a man feel as if he were an assaulter and batterer with intent to kill. Blessings rest upon those charming sensible women, who, when they feel cross, as we all do at times, will go to bed and sleep it away! No, let us everywhere put down treason and ostracize traitors. It is lawful to suspend "naso adunco" those whom we may not otherwise suspend. But even traitors have rights which white men and white women are bound to respect. We will crush them, if we can, but we will crush them in open field, by fair fight, not by stealing into their bedchambers to stab them through the heart of a wife.

H

UMAN nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign element is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was

"only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence.

When William Blake flashed across the path of English polite society, society was confounded. It had never had to do with such an apparition before, and was at its wits' end. But some Daniel was found wise enough to come to judgment, and pronounce the poet-painter mad; whereupon society at once composed itself, and went on its way rejoicing.

There are a few persons, however, who are not disposed to let this verdict stand unchallenged. Mr. Arthur Gilchrist, late a barrister of the Middle Temple, a man, therefore, who must have been accustomed to weigh evidence, and who would not have been likely to decide upon insufficient grounds, wrote a life of Mr. Blake, in which he strenuously and ably opposed the theory of insanity. From this book, chiefly, we propose to lay before our readers a slight sketch of the life of a man who, whether sane or insane, was one of the most remarkable productions of his own or of any age.

One word, in the beginning, regarding the book before us. The death of its author, while as yet but seven chapters of his work had been printed,

would preclude severe criticism, even if the spirit and purpose with which he entered upon his undertaking, and which he sustained to its close, did not dispose us to look leniently upon imperfections of detail. Possessing that first requisite of a biographer, thorough sympathy with his subject, he did not fall into the opposite error of indiscriminate panegyric. Looking at life from the standpoint of the "madman," he saw how fancies could not only appear, but be, facts; and then, crossing over, he looked at the madman from the world's standpoint, and saw how these soul-born facts could seem not merely fancies, but the wild vagaries of a crazed brain. For the warmth with which he espoused an unpopular cause, for the skill with which he set facts in their true light, for the ability which he brought to the defence of a man whom the world had agreed to condemn, for the noble persistence with which he forced attention to genius that had hitherto received little but neglect, we cannot too earnestly express our gratitude. But the greater our admiration of material excellence, the greater is our regret for superficial defects. The continued supervision of the author would doubtless have removed many infelicities of style; yet we marvel that one with so clear an insight should ever, even in the first glow of composition, have involved himself in sentences so complicated and so obscure. The worst faults of Miss Sheppard's worst style are reproduced here,