a moment recoil, and the spring is found, the door flies open, and the daring intruder escapes, after having won the means of proving his friend's innocence, - what a relief do we experience, what an exultation in his triumph!

It is one of the merits of the story that no separate, independent interest distracts the reader's mind from the hero. The gloomy, glassy-eyed, subtleminded, musing Sir Reginald Glanville; the erudite, pedantic, ambitious Vincent, overflowing with alternate jest and quotation; the worldly-minded Lady Francis, so sincere in her insincerity; the fascinating Lady Roseville, so symmetrical in person, so charming in her manners; Mr. Wormwood, "the noli-me-tangere of literary lions;" Tyrrell, Thornton, and others, are finely portrayed, but they shine with feeble light compared with that of the central luminary, the ever-radiant, sparkling Pelham.

It

The style of this work strikingly contrasts with that of the author's later novels and romances. is less periodic; and there is a liveliness, a dash, an abandon in its short sentences, which we find in none of his Caxton and other carefully elaborated novels. The vigor which pervades all his works is here peculiarly noticeable. In every page there is full mental wakefulness; nothing sleeps, nothing dawdles; and the reader's attention is riveted to the hero and his successes from the beginning of his story to the end.

The first edition of " Pelham" was published in London, in 1828, in three volumes 12mo, by Henry Colburn. A translation in French was published by Coulommiers (two vols. 18mo) in the Bibliothèque des meilleurs romans étrangers, Paris, 1874.

W. M.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1828.1

I BELIEVE if we were to question every author upon the subject of his literary grievances, we should find that the most frequent of all complaints was less that of being unappreciated than that of being misunderstood. All of us write perhaps with some secret object, for which the world cares not a straw; and while each reader fixes his peculiar moral upon a book, no one, by any chance, hits upon that which the author had in his own heart designed to inculcate. Hence this edition of "Pelham " acquires that appendage in the shape of an explanatory preface which the unprescient benevolence of the author did not inflict on his readers when he first confided his work to their candor and discretion. Even so, some candidate for parliamentary honors first braves the hust ings: relying only on the general congeniality of sentiment between himself and the electors, but alas! once chosen, the liberal confidence which took him upon trust is no more, and when he reappears to commend himself to the popular suffrage, he is required to go into the ill-bred egotisms of detail, and explain all that he has done and 1 Namely, the Second Edition.

all that he has failed to do, to the satisfaction of an enlightened but too inquisitive constituency.

It is a beautiful part in the economy of this world, that nothing is without its use; every weed in the great thoroughfares of life has a honey, which observation can easily extract; and we may glean no unimportant wisdom from folly itself, if we distinguish while we survey, and satirize while we share it. It is in this belief that these volumes have their origin. I have not been willing that even the common-places of society should afford neither a record nor a moral; and it is therefore from the common-places of society that the materials of this novel have been wrought. By treating trifles naturally, they may be rendered amusing, and that which adherence to nature renders amusing, the same cause also may render instructive; for nature is the source of all morals, and the enchanted well from which not a single drop can be taken that has not the power of curing some of our diseases.

I have drawn for the hero of my work such a person as seemed to me best fitted to retail the opinions and customs of the class and age to which he belongs; a per!sonal combination of antithesis, a fop and a philosopher, a voluptuary and a moralist, a trifler in appearance, but rather one to whom trifles are instructive, than one to whom trifles are natural,- an Aristippus on a limited scale, accustomed to draw sage conclusions from the follies he adopts, and while professing himself a votary of pleasure, desirous in reality to become a disciple of wisdom. Such a character I have found it more difficult to portray than to conceive; I have found it more difficult