Whitecross and the Bench : a Reminiscence of the Past.
By the Author of "Five Years' Penal Servitude." (Bentley and Son.) —This book is one among the many instances which come under our notice of the insecurity of taking it for granted that because a man has written one good book, everything else he writes must necessarily be worth reading. The realism of "Five Years' Penal Servitude," the knowledge that not only wore the experiences which it detailed absolutely true in the particular case of the narrator, but that they apply to the system under which our rogues and swindlers are undergoing punishment at this moment, lent that book a strong and vivid interest. In the present in- stance, nothing of that kind exists to recommend a dull rdchauffe, not particularly well done, of old stories, none of which are so repre- sentative as The,ckeray's sketches of Captain Shandon in the Queen's Bench, and Bowdon Crawley at Moss's, in Cursitor Street, or one-half SO striking as Dickens's narrative of the sharp practice of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, and the episode of Jingle and Job Trotter, on "the poor side" of the Fleet Prison.
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