of real life, and the personages introduced show little sign of being “rubbed down” or “touched up and varnished” for effect.  The narrative is easy and direct, full of humor and pathos; and the descriptions of simple life in a country village are often charming from their freshness, vivacity, and sweetness.  More than this, these stories give proof of that wide range of experience which does not so much depend on an extended or varied acquaintance with the world, as upon an intelligent and comprehensive sympathy, which makes each new person with whom one is connected a new illustration of the unsolved problems of life and a new link in the unending chain of human development.

The book is one that deserves a more elegant form than that which the Messrs. Harper have given it in their reprint.

Twin Roses:  A Narrative. By ANNA CORA RITCHIE, Author of “Autobiography of an Actress,” “Mimic Life,” etc.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

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.

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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.