Bishop from this parish to somewhere else a considerable distance off, whence, after a variety of troubles, he goes abroad as a travelling watering-place clergyman.  After this, his wife becomes a Roman Catholic for six months, and then developes into a thoroughpaced infidel of generally loose character.  She takes up with a Lion Comique of the Music-Halls, who is summarily kicked down-stairs by the Reverend Mr. Smith on his return home one evening.  And at this point I closed the book, not caring one dump what became of any of the characters, or of the book, or of the writer, and unable to wait for the moral of this highly “moral story,” which, I dare say, might have done me a great deal of good.  So I turned to Vanity Fair, and re-read for the hundredth time, and with increased pleasure, the great scene where Rawdon Crawley, returning home suddenly, surprises Becky in her celebrated tete-a-tete with my Lord Steyne.

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With pleasure the Baron welcomes Vol.  No.  IV. of ROUTLEDGE’s Carisbrooke Library, which contains certain Early Prose Romances, the first and foremost among them being the delightful fable of Reynart the Fox.  Have patience with the old English, refer to the explanatory notes, and its perusal will well repay every reader.  How came it about that modern Uncle Remus had caught so thoroughly the true spirit of this Mediaeval romance?  I forget, at this moment, who wrote Uncle Remus—­and I beg his pardon for so doing—­but whoever it was, he professed only to dress up and record what he had actually heard from a veritable Uncle Remus. Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Old Man Bar, are not the creatures of AEsop’s Fables; they are the characters in Reynart the Fox.  The tricks, the cunning, the villany of Reynart, unredeemed by aught except his affection for his wife and family, are thoroughly amusing, and his ultimate success, and increased prosperity; present a truer picture of actual life than novels in which vice is visibly punished, and virtue patiently rewarded.  And once more I call to mind the latter days of Becky’s career.

Speaking of THACKERAY, Messrs. CASSELL & Co. have just brought out a one-and-threepenny edition ("the threepence be demmed!”) of the Yellowplush Papers, with a dainty canary-coloured Jeames on the cover.  At the same time the same firm produce, in the same form, The Last Days of Pompeii, The Last Days of Palmyra, and The Last of the Mohicans.  Odd, that the first issue of this new series should be nearly all “Lasts.” The Yellowplush Papers might have been kept back, and The Last of the Barons been substituted, just to make the set of lasts perfect.  The expression is suggestive of Messrs. CASSELL going in for the shoemaking trade. The Last Days of Palmyra I have never read.  “I will try it,” says the bold Baron.