Faces for Fortunes. By Augustus Mayhew. 3 vols. (Tinsley Brothers.)—"
There is no sound in this world so beautiful as the laughter of women. In the hope of hearing it this book was written." It is not therefore a novel, our readers will observe, but a book ; and not only a book, but a joke ; and not only a joke, but a joke suited for ladies. This being so, we can only say that ladies like their jokes in a much longer and more elaborate form than men do. Three volumes of facetiousness about matrimony, marked far less by wit or novelty thin by high spirits, is too much for male digestion. If Mr. Mayhew's luenbrations had appeared in one of the smaller monthly magazines, they would have been regarded as average funny papers, and as the bulk of these volumes con- sists of "an almanack of successful courtship, containing full guidance for mothers and daughters during each month in the year,"—in other words, twelve essays headed each with the name of a month,—perhaps periodical literature has already benefited by them. The last half of Vol. III. consists of an amusing little story, which Bentley or Colburn ought not to have refused.
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