Behind a Brass Knocker. By Frederick Barnard and Charles H.
Ross. (Chatto and Windae.)—Here we have sketches of the inmates of a boarding-house, a numerous company, among which a dismal cynicism permits us to see few that are not knaves, fools, or lunatics. Few would live by choice in a boarding-house ; but we take it that those who find it necessary or convenient to do so are about as honest and as sane as other people. Dickens set the example of laughing at them, but his laugh was good-humoured, not the risus antarus with which Messrs. Barnard and Ross introduce these "grim realities," as they call them. There is a certain cleverness in these sketches, and, it may be owned, a certain truth. But, as a whole, they are false. There was never gathered together such a menagerie of evil beasts as we find collected at "Mrs. Mite's Boarding-house."
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