CURRENT LITERATURE.
A Chip of the Old Block. A Novel. By George Gretton. 2 vols. (Chapman and Hall.)—This is what we owe to Mr. Whalley. This woeful rubbish is the necessary antidote to Murphy and the Con- fessional Unmasked. Mr. George Gretton modestly calls his two volumes of uninterrupted controversy a novel, and tells us that everything con- tained in them has come within his personal observation. That is not unlikely, for there are great fools in the world, and the proverb says that "birds of a feather flock together." Perhaps Mr. Gretton himself met some English strangers in Boulogne, which by a subtle play upon words is called Toroville in the novel, and on their asking him the way to the English Church, directed them to the French Roman Catholic Cathedral. No doubt Mr. Gretton himself took part in those one-sided arguments about Popery, where the Roman Catholics had all the logic and the Protestants all the abuse. The easy victory gained by the first impresses no with a profound sense of the weakness of our Protestant champions, and of Mr. Gretton's good luck in being opposed to such names as Dr. Morerant, Mr. Wrott, and the Rev. Wardeoff Pope. An English family which takes a trip to Boulogne and is con- verted by an interesting piano-letter from extreme Protestant bigotry to extreme Ultramontane folly is a treasure to the candid observer, and almost justifies two volumes. But nothing can justify the inanity of these two.
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