Charles Auchester. Second Edition. (Chapman and Hall.)-We welcome a re-issue
of a novel the merits of which were always too much.
obscured by its extravagance. The world, which knows only musical pro- fessors under the name of artists, and finds them people who give them- selves insufferable airs, stood aghast at a book which declares that no artist can possibly be vain, and exalts violinists and singers to the rank of kings, and a German composer to be an angel. No doubt the idealiza- tion of the perfect artist can be suitably treated only in a poetical form, and the attempt to bring characters, essentially ideal, into real life
-to represent them eating, drinking, and mixing with the grosser world-will always produce a thousand laughable incongruities. But-
they who grasp the writer's purpose and overlook this one great fault of design will be carried along by the real enthusiasm which pervades the work, and from which much may be learned which is both true and beautiful. Yet exaggeration defeats itself, and the Seraphael of the novel is not the equal of the Mendelssohn whom we know in his letters and diaries.
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