14 JANUARY 1865, Page 19

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Foe on the Hearth. A NoveL 3 vols. (T. Cantley Newby.)- - Between the first and last pages of this remarkable work "all the interim is Like a phantasm& or a hideous dream."

It is seventy " sensation " novels rolled into one. The emotions come so thick one after another that the mind reels under them, and loses all distinct conception of character or plot. There are murders, poison-

ings, duels, frauds, forgeries, hairbreadth escapes, lightnings, tempests, floods, mad dogs, divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death. Nobody is what he appears to be, and everybody turns out to be somebody else.

What exactly it is all about, or what connection any one thing has with any other thing, or why anybody should have wanted to do what he did do, we do not pretend clearly to understand, but it is all very romantic and exciting, and everything, we are glad to say, comes right in the end. The bad people die in horrible agonies, and with "a frantic and deadly shriek." The people who ought not to have been married are proved to have been buckled by sham clergymen, and the people who ought to have been married are as inseparable as the Siamese twins. The splendid creature six feet high, with a nose like a hawk, tho bearing of nature's nobles, and the clothes of a pauper, turns out to be the Marquis of Cromarty, and it is dimly hinted to us that he will be a Duke. And the baronet's son marries the lovely and accomplished heroine, and the Marquis is happily united in Hymen's bonds, and even the Earl and the Viscount matched in a manner which is as satisfactory as their inferior rank permits. And all is "love, joy, and rapture !—rapture, joy, and love !"