Lord of Himself: j Novel. By Francis a Underscood. (1349n,)—
American writere of flagon are generally so much inferior in their art to our own, that we rarely anticipate pleasure from the perusal of a Transatlantic novk The enthusiasm with -which Dr. Mayo's "Never Again" was greeted owed something to the rarity, as
well as to the daintiness of the treat which it afforded us. In Mr. Underwood's Lord of Himself, we find a work of fiction of quite unusual merit, which interests us in the development of the story and the fate of every individual—except a comic pair of lovers, objec- tionable and dreary—and gives a picture of a state of American society which has passed away for ever. While it is quite free from the declamatory extravagance which rendered the pre-Abolition literature of the United States tiresome and untrustworthy, this novel depicts with serious and earnest power the evil of the "Accursed Thing," and the dismal swamp into which it turned the moral and social life of the South. The plot is clever, but it is not quite skilfully worked out. We fancy it is a first novel ; and we are sure the author has it in him to do very good things indeed.
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