CU RRENT LITERATURE.
• The Vanity Fair Album. Volume VIII. (Vanity Fair Office)— " Jehu Junior" claims as the great merit of the portraits which he introduces to the world that "they present the brutal and uncompro- mising truth about the man." "Brutal" is, of course, used in the French sense. It is a very appropriate epithet, if we employ it in its ordinary signification. It is the " brute " in the man that these portraits exhibit. If he have a heavy jowl, a receding or protuberant forehead, a long upper-lip, a wide mouth, these fleshly characteristics of the man are given, and more than given. The man himself we do not see, and the more we happen to know of him, the less his portrait will please. We must own that these volumes satisfy us less and less, though we must also admit that they never fail to be amusing, and that to look over them affords as effective a distraction as could readily be found for the ten minutes during which we are waiting for dinner. But it will be better not to look at the letterpress.
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