from situation to situation and thrill follows thrill with daring rapidity.
The plot is of the simplest, but worked out with surprising skill, while
the events are related with that vivid imagination which the subject
demands. Who is there that does not feel a glow of exaltation and rejoice
with the heir when he comes, upon reversion, into the property from which
he has been so long excluded? Mr. Blewitt treats this incident with a sense
of romance and picturesqueness of language reminiscent of the ballad of
"The Lord of Lynn." In its facts the ballad bears a striking resemblance to
those so graphically described by our author, but in point of execution
lacks the true breath of poetic inspiration which pervades Mr. Blewitt's
book.

Nor is his work wanting in pathos. There are few who will not sympathise
with the hero when he discovers that the life-estate of the fair widow whom
he adores with all the fierce yearnings of his passionate soul is subject
to a collateral limitation to widowhood. Mr. Blewitt's silence on the
disappointment which embittered his spirit and the doubts which tormented
his mind is more eloquent than any soliloquy of _Hamlet_.

It is not however in description but in characterisation that Mr. Blewitt
is pre-eminent. We know of nothing in works of this nature to equal the
skilful psychological analysis, the sympathy of treatment and the fidelity
to nature with which the author draws line by line the character of Q. The
description of him as seised in fee simple is a touch of genius. We can
remember nothing in the English language to compare with this unless it be
that brilliant passage in which Mr. Blewitt sketches in a few lightning
strokes the character of Richard Roe, a man at once pugnacious,
overbearing, litigious and utterly regardless of truth and honesty.

The learned editors have rendered a great service to the cause of learning