LONG HOLLOW ,
Is a novel in three volumes. It is one of those extraordinary books which produces at length DA effect by a reiteration of small circumstances. It is the drop of water hollowing the stone. Take any page whatever, and it will be found that the details are so mi- nute that it requires a mental microscope to detect their proportions, and yet an effect in the end is impressed upon the reader: he as it were absorbs the book ; it impregnates him ; as in a Scotch mist, you cannot detect the drops of rain, but you are nevertheless wet through. The language, the characters, the incidents, are pur- posely reduced to the most every-day level : everything is of the most homely description : effect is either disdained, or the writer is incapable of it. If a man were to build a boat of chips, or make its rigging out of ropes-ends, he would do what the author of Long Hollow has done in another line of building. It is the novel made after dinner from a mental cheeseparing ; but who could du the like ? Put before the ablest writer of the day such materials as are connected into an interesting book, and he would cry " it rope of sand!" A mechanic analogous to the author of Long Hollow could finish the Thames Tunnel with a knitting-needle. 0 Pa- tience ! justly art thou represented by a woman ! How ninny a winter's night has this novel taken in spinning; and with what un- wearying diligence has the spinner laid hold of every bit of stuff within her reach ! Honour be to the spinner of Long Hollow !- to knit those descriptions of Long Hollows called worsted stockins,s, has always been deemed by us little short of a miracle of patience; but in future our emblem of that great virtue shall be the figure of Mrs. Bryan Bedingfield, sitting on the sea-shore, and sorting speci- mens of sand.
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