THE GILDED AGE.* Tam is a book descriptive of men

and manners in America, which, but for its size, and the obvious intention of its authors that it should meet the usual requirements of a three-volume novel, we might call a satire upon American society. The very first reflection suggested by its perusal will probably be one of satisfaction that the writers are not English. Americans, as they read its bitter ex- posures of American folly and cupidity, will know that their satirists are still at least their countrymen, and that the book can- not be accepted as one proof more of the malignant persistence with which British writers misconceive and misrepresent Ameri- cans. The second reflection is likely to be that, even when large allowance has been made on the score of exaggeration and carica-

* The Gilded Age: a Novel. By Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. 3 vols. London and New York: Boutledge and Sons.

ture, the picture of American society drawn by Mark Twain and C. D. Warner betrays the presence of grievous distemper in the body politic. The solemn and beautiful words of Scripture- " The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint "—suggest a quieter, but hardly a deadlier type of moral disease than that dizzy heat of brain, that fitful impulsiveness of feeling, that raging impatience, that cankering avarice, of which we have record in these volumes. And then, as we turn the whole matter over in our mind, the thought occurs that there is something in the manner of the writers, in the style of the book, which corresponds to the character of the society it describes, and that one would not, on the whole, augur well from its pages for the future of fictitious literature in America. There is a " too-muchness " in the scheme and execution, an extravagance, a lack of reserved and chastened power, a general want of shade and presence of glare, which give us the idea of literature running to seed. We

shall hope, indeed, that this may indicate but a passing phase of American literature. The universal law of action and reaction— the measurement of all processes of advance by waves that rise and fall—ought not to be forgotten for a moment in basing con- jectures as to the future upon the phenomena of the present. A hasty observer might have said that fictitious literature in England was hurrying into an abyss of sensationalism when the quiet felicity of Thackeray's later manner recalled genius to better work, and novel-readers to higher admiration. Artists, male and female, in the bowl-and-dagger department of literature, might be supposed to have blunted the sensibilities of the public to finer excellence, when Mr. Trollope laid the foundations of world-wide popularity by delineating, in English almost as simple as Banyan's, the melodious kindliness of Mr. Harding and the interests of the pensioners of Hiram's Hospital. Possibly, therefore, the extravagance of such books as the Gilded Age may portend the advent of a school of [quieter and deeper imaginative literature in America.

The book overflows with vivacity, and is in many parts amusing. It possesses true humour, though not of the highest kind. We are compelled to qualify our praise to this extent for several reasons. It fails in originality, and it is, as we have already hinted, overdone. We are bound to add that, in at least one instance, it is unnecessarily profane. When we say that the humour is not in the strictest sense original, we do not mean to deny .that it may be very creditable, very enjoyable humour for all that. Our position is that some of the moat humorous passages in this book impress us irresistibly with the feeling that they would not have been written if some previous author had not written in much the same manner, and that certain characters are but casts—in chalk—from figures executed previously in marble. Colonel Sellers is insepa- rably connected in our mind with Mr. Micawber. No man devoid of humour could have depicted him as he is depicted by Messrs. Twain and Warner, but these gentlemen might have laid claim to far deeper originality if Dickens had never invented Micawber. It was possible that, adopting the outline from Dickens, they might have so filled it in that their work would eclipse in power and interest the work of the designer. In that case they might be held to be more original writers than Dickens, just as Shakespeare is regarded as a more original artist than the Italian novelists or Saxon chroniclers, whom he immortalised by conde- scending to borrow from them. The Julius Caesar of Plutarch and the Julius Cxsar of Shakespeare have many features in com- mon. Shakespeare evidently followed with carefulness the tracings of Plutarch's pencil ; and yet an incomparably higher originality is shown in Shakespeare's Julius than in Plutarch's. Colonel Sellers has several traits which we do not find, or find far leas strongly marked, in Micawber. He has more of speculative ingenuity, more of fussy but real activity ; he is, in fact, an American Micawber ; but he is after all a copy, not a transformation and reproduction, of the English original :-

"' He's an honest seal,' says Mrs. Hawkins, describing the Colonel, and means the very best in the world, but rm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty. Ho has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free hand, the good, generous soul, but something does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new notion ho can out-talk a machine What a

head he has got There in Kentucky, when ho raked

up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a per- petual-motion machine for twenty-two years, and Eschol Sellers saw at a glance whore just ono more little cog-wheel would settle the business, why I could son it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and hammered us out of bed, and told the whole thing in a whisper, with the doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money in it—anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull out ; and then when they put the new cog-wheel in they'd overlooked something somewhere, and it was'nt any use, the trouble- some thing wouldn't go. That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the world ; and how him and Si did sit up nights work- ing at it, with the curtains down, and me watching to see if any neigh- bours were about. The man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black, gummy oil that stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and ho refixed it himself till it was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about that; and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnatti with his lamp that he got made that time he got a houseful of rich speculators to see him exhibit, only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the

heads off the whole crowd Its always sunrise with that man, and fine and blazing at that—never gets noon though—leaves off and rises again."

Colonel Sellers had a clock. It "never came within fifteen strokes of striking the right time," and its bands " always hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and travelled in company the rest of the way borne." The possessor justly con- sidered it unique and took pride in it :—

", Remarkable clock !' said Sellers, and got up and wound it. • I've been offered—well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, "Come, now, Colonel. name your price —I must have that clock I" But, my goodness, I'd as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to—silence in the court now, she's begun to strike ! You can't talk against—you have to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah!—well, as I was saying, when—she's beginning again I Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twen- ah ! that's all.—Yes, as I was saying to old Judge—go it, old girl, don't mind me.—Now how is that ?—isn't that a good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead I Sleep? Why you might as well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen to that. She'll strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping—you'll see. There ain't another clock like that in Christendom.'

Micawber always hoped that something would turn up. Eschol Sellers did not wait upon fortune, but turned up the most sur- prising Kohinoors by merely delving in the inexhaustible diamond- mine of his own inventive fancy. Hear him on his optic liniment, his listener being Mr. Washington Hawkins, a kindred spirit, but of far fewer years :—" I'm still experimenting ; there's one in- gredient wanted yet to perfect the thing, and somehow I can't just manage to hit upon the thing that's necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Eschol Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age.!" Having ex- plained how, in the United States, a profit of at least three hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum could be secured, he adds that " then it would be time to turn attention toward the real idea of the business." Poor Washington, who has just eighteen dollars in the world, suggests that there would be some- thing like reality in 350,000 dollars a year. The Colonel spurns

the grovelling idea :—

" Stuff ! Why, what an infant you are, Washington—what a guile- less, short-sighted, easily contented innocent you are, my poor little country-bred know-nothing ! . . . You ought to know that if I throw my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of operations is the solid earth; its clients the swarming nations that inhabit it Why, Washington, in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling human creatures—and every separate and individual devil of them's got the ophthalmia! It's as natural to them as noses are—and sin. It's born with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the Orient, and what will be the result ? Why, our head-quarters would be in Constantinople, and our hind-quarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta! Annual income —well, God only knows how many millions and millions apiece !"

This is excellent fooling. The American Micawber, or compound of Micawber and Jingle, is a thoroughly entertain- ing fellow. But even Dickens did not permit himself such a licence of caricature as is taken in the passages we have quoted, and it was Dickens's inability to stay his hand when it was running into caricature that in a multitude of instances deprived his work of the highest artistic character. Caricature still stronger than that of Dickens—and such, we submit, is the cari- cature of which we have given samples—belongs to melodrama, almost to pantomime.

As combining extravagance and profanity, each in an extreme degree, we would refer to the passage in which a negro is repre- 8ented as mistaking a river steamer for the Divine being:—

. "Suddenly Uncle Dan'! exclaimed, Chil'en, dah's sumfin a-comin' !' All crowded together, and every heart beat faster. Uncle Den'l pointed down the river with his bony finger. A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, away towards a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape, and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled with sparks, poured out, and went tumbling away into the farther dark- ness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river, and attended the monster like a torch-light procession. 'What is it ? Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l?'—With deep solemnity the answer came. 'It's de Almighty ! git down on yo' knees It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a moment, And then, while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and stronger. and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's voice lifted up its supplications: '0 Lord, we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, wo ain't ready yit, we ain't ready—let dose po' chil'en hab one me' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole niggah, if you's got to hab somebody. Good Lord, good deah Lord, we don't know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on, but we knows by de way you's a comin', we knows by do way you's a tiltin' along in yo' charyot o' fiah, dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it,' Sc., 40."

The book professes to be written with a moral and patriotic intention, and the profession is, we dare say, sincere. It aims at checking the "all-pervading speculativeness " of contem- porary Americans, and branding " the shameful corruption which lately crept into our [American] politics, and in a handful of'years

has spread, until the pollution has affected some portion of every State and every Territory in the Union." We have given no out- line of the story, we have not even named the characters, but we can assure our readers that they will find interest in the former and variety and vivacity in the latter. The principal female character commits a murder, is acquitted, tries lecturing, and dies of a broken heart when hooted off the platform. The Colonel, we need hardly say, continues poor and hopeful to the end. Bubble projects of several kinds are described, and the reader is made acquainted with the American arts of lobbying members of Congress and buying votes. There is great talent—there is something almost like genius—in the book, but a better effect might have been produced by a more careful elaboration of half the materials.