interest, and at length become levelled with the mere ephemera, or
day-flies of literature. It is true that novel-writing has, within the last
sixteen, or eighteen years, attained a much higher rank than it hitherto
enjoyed; but it should be remembered that this superiority has not been
grounded in mawkish records of the fashionable follies of high life, such
as my Lord Duke, or my Lady Bab, might indite below stairs, for the
amusement of those in the drawing-room; on the contrary, it was founded in
portraits and pictures of human nature, strengthened by historical, or
matter-of-fact interest, and stripped of the trickery of fancy and romance;
whereas, the chronicles of fashion are little better than the vagaries of
an eccentric few, who bear the same proportion to the general mass of
society, that the princes, heroes, and statesmen of history do to the
whole world. This is a fallacy of which thousands of Bath and Cheltenham
novel-readers are not yet aware, and which the listless _Dangles_ of
Brighton and Margate have yet to learn, ere they can hope to arrive at a
correct estimate of human nature; but to such readers we cordially
recommend _Penelope_ as the best corrective we can prescribe for the bile
of fashionable prejudice, or the nausea arising from overstrained fiction,
modified as it is to the romance of real life.

_Penelope_ has, however, one of the failings common to fashionable novels.
Its plot is weak and meagre--but it is still simple and natural, and has
not borrowed any of those adventitious aids to which we have alluded above.
It bears throughout an air of probability, untinctured by romance, and has
the strong impress of truth and fidelity to nature. Sketchy and vivacious,
always humorous and sometimes witty; it has many scenes and portraits,
which in terseness and energy, will compare with any of its predecessors;
and occasionally there are touches of genuine sentiment which seize on the
sympathies of the reader with more than common effect. The incidents of
the narrative do not present many opportunities for these displays of the