World's End. By Richard Jefferies. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)— Mats
Is a very marvollens story indeed. A city grows up where a smarsh has been, and the question is,—To whom does this city belong ? 'An army of claimants springs up. AS they have to cross the Atlantic, 'two very desperate villains seek to make their own title good by 'destroying the whole company at one stroke. What plan they devise for doing this, and what kind of success they meet with, the reader may, if he will, discover for himself. Ho will find besides, not, indeed another crime of such colossal proportions, but harrowing incidents snough to furnish any ordinary novel. It is difficult to estimate the interest of a story which transcends all limits of probability, yet un- doubtedly World's End is cleverly told, and not without something of the art which gives the air of probability to the improbable. It has, too, other merits. The early part of the second volume, describing Aymer Malet's love-making, is excellent in its way, and we quite re- gret the necessity which the author fools himself to be under of inter- rupting its idyllic sweetness with a horrible catastrophe. In short, though we cannot admire the conception of the novel before us, it is easy to see that the writer might both plan and execute one that should he really good. As Mr. Jefferies pointedly asks, "Was it not Goldsmith who wrote The Vicar of Wakefield ' to pay the expenses of his parent's funeral?" we may reply that it was not. Johnson wrote " Rasselas " for that object. As for "The Vicar of Wakefield," the circumstances of its publication—of its composition we know nothing—are curiously un like Mr. Jefferies's pathetic imagination.
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