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logique. Par Christian Bartholméss. Paris. 1850 . 291
II.-1. A Year's Sermons to Boys, preached in the Chapel of
St. Peter's College, Radley. By W. Sewell, B.D.,
Warden. London. 1854.

2. Seven Sermons preached in the Chapel of Marlborough

College. By George E. L. Cotton, M.A., Master of

Marlborough College. London. 1855

III.-The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable Family.

Edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. With illustrations

on steel and wood by Richard Doyle. 2 vols., 8vo.

London. 1855

IV. Selections from the Family Papers preserved at Caldwell,
1496-1853. Presented to the Maitland Club by William
Mure, M.P. Glasgow, 1854 -

V.-1. The Charities of London: comprehending the Benevo-
lent, Educational, and Religious Institutions, their
Origin and Design, Progress, and present Position. By
Sampson Low, jun. London. 1850.

2. The Million-peopled City. By the Rev. J. Garwood.

3. The Rookeries of London. By Thomas Beames, M.A.

London. 1850.

4. Meliora. First and Second Series. Edited by Viscount

Ingestre.

5. Chapters on Prisons and Prisoners.

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ART. III.-The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable Family. Edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. With illustrations on steel and wood by Richard Doyle. 2 vols., 8vo., London, 1855.

THIS is Mr. Thackeray's masterpiece, as it is undoubtedly one

of the masterpieces of English fiction, if fiction is the proper term to apply to the most minute and faithful transcript of actual life which is anywhere to be found. The ordinary resource of novelists is to describe characters under exceptional circumstances, to show them influenced by passions which seldom operate in their excess with each individual, and to make them actors in adventures which in their aggregate happen to few or none. It is the picked passages of existence which they represent, and these again are often magnified and coloured beyond the measure of nature. Mr. Thackeray looks at life under its ordinary aspects, and copies it with a fidelity and artistic skill which are surprising. Men, women, and children talk, act, and think in his pages exactly as they are talking, acting, and thinking at every hour of every day. The same

thorns,

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