Zeno. By a Lady. (Parker and Co., Oxford.)—" The sea,
with its everlasting diapason of majestic thundor, rolled at the feet of the two, who had learned something of the harmonies of the spheres from the wonderful and revered philosopher, Pythagoras, whose devoted followers still continued to teach his theories and doctrines." From this sentence ono may gain a tolerably accurate impression of the style—at once of writing and of thought—of the lady who writes this very philosophic romance, which deals with the time of Zeno, and which opens in the vicinity of "the cliffs which encircled the beautiful bay of Elea in Southern Italy." It is composed mostly of dialogues, in which Zeno, Parmenides, and other more or less historical personages take part. There are adventures, also, and a political conspiracy, and love-making of the portentous kind in which Voltaire and the divine Emily indulged, for Zeno and Heliodora seldom con- descend to speak on any less important subject than Achilles and the Tortoise. There is almost a surfeit of cleverness and learning in Zeno ; indeed, it looks like a tour de force by an exceptionally bright girl-graduate. But it would have been as well if this tour (le force had not taken the form of a romance.
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