subject of this necessarily brief notice, there is no danger of their calling up less agreeable associations. As a journalist, essayist, novelist, and dramatic writer, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold has now been many years before the world, and in all the various subjects he has handled, there is not one in which he has not displayed himself a worthy son of his celebrated father. His "Imperial Paris," not less than Mr. Bayle St. John's "Purple Tints," is an illustration, not a little flattering to our national vanity, of the justice and discrimination with which Englishmen examine the character and institutions of the French, who, in their judgment of us, still retain the ignorance and prejudices of past generations.

One of the earliest works of Mr. Jerrold was a novel called "The Disgrace of the Family," which attracted much attention at the time of its first appearance in 1848.

GERALDINE E. JEWSBURY.

LIKE Mrs. Gaskill, Miss Jewsbury, one of the most impassioned of our prose poets, is an inhabitant of that city which loudly abusive politicians delight to represent as the peculiar seat of mammon-worship and sordid ambition. A sister of the gifted author of the "Three Histories," Miss Jewsbury has produced several works of imagination, which entitle her to a high rank amongst the many female writers, whose rare endowments and varied powers are amongst the most striking intellectual phenomena of our time. Her first work, "Zöe, or the History of Two Lives," appeared in 1845, and has been followed by "The Half Sisters,"" Marian Withers," "The History of an Adopted Child," and "Constance Herbert."

JULIA KAVANAGH,CHARLES KINGSLEY.

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JULIA KAVANAGH,

THE most careless reader who has turned over these volumes must have been struck with the large number of novelists which Ireland has furnished; and of them not many have earned a wider or more justly merited popularity than Miss Kavanagh. She commenced her literary career something more than ten years since, and has produced several tales, and novels, as well as two biographical works entitled "Women of Christianity," and "Women in France of the Eighteenth Century." Of her works of fiction we may mention "Madeleine," "Nathalie," "Daisy Burns," "Grace Lee," and "Rachel Gray."

Miss Kavanagh was born in 1824, at Thurles, county Tipperary, and is on both sides of respectable descent.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

THE vigorous intellect and generous heart of this great novelist, true poet, and zealous clergyman, are familiar to readers of every class of society. His "Village Sermons " are "household words,” and are to be found set apart with the Sacred Scriptures in the cottages of our peasantry. Scholars have read with delight and improvement "Hypatia," and "The Schools of Alexandria," and philosophers and statesmen, not less than hard-worked operatives and idle skimmers of every novel that finds its way into three volumes, have been startled and compelled to both thought and action by the vivid descriptions, new views, earnest appeals to generous exertion, and manly denunciations of selfishness and sloth, contained in "Alton Locke," "Yeast,"

"Westward Ho," and "Two Years Ago." The literary clergyman is a common sight; popular preachers who occupy their spare hours with composing fashionable novels for May-fair, and pulpit orators of sectarian animosities who flood the world of their admirers with endless thousands of silly tracts, are plentiful indeed; but a clergyman who, like Mr. Kingsley, without ever degrading his sacred office to serve the purposes of an advertisement, or ever for a moment forgetting the solemn duties of his calling, uses literature as a means of instructing and elevating his fellow men, is a rare spectacle.

The Rev. Charles Kingsley, Rector of Eversley, Hants, and Honorary Canon of Middleham, was born at a village in Devonshire, on the borders of Dartmoor, in June, 1819. He is therefore now at an age when the mental powers are usually in their perfection. After receiving a good preliminary education at King's College, London, Mr. Kingsley entered the society of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and terminated his undergraduate career by gaining the honours of a senior optime, and a first-class man in the Classical Tripos. After devoting a short time to the study of the law, with the intention of going to the bar, he was ordained to the curacy of Eversley, and the living of that parish becoming vacant within two years after his ordination, the patron, the late Sir John Cope, Baronet, presented him to it.

Mr. Kingsley is one of the most productive writers of his age, and if he continue to publish at the same rate as he has during the last twelve years, he will, ere long, become a more voluminous writer than Mr. James. In the British Museum catalogue are mentioned eighteen publications from his pen, the first of which appeared in 1845. But as yet there are no signs of his over-writing himself. The same fresh wit, sturdy humour, pure and nervous English style, copious learning, delicate knowledge of character, and

positively miraculous power for painting natural scenery, that were so universally admired in "Alton Locke," and "Hypatia," are found in "Two Years Ago."

CHARLES JAMES LEVER.

THE author of "Harry Lorrequer," "Charles O'Malley," "Jack Hinton," "Our Mess," "The O'Donaghue," "The Commissioner," "St. Patrick's Eve," "Roland Cashel," "The Knight of Gwynne," "The Daltons," "The Dodd Family Abroad," ""The Fortunes of Glencore," &c. &c., was born in Dublin on the 31st of August, 1806. His father was a substantial and prosperous architect of that capital. The author commenced life as a medical practitioner, and it was while he filled the post of physician to the Embassy at Brussels that he published" Harry Lorrequer," in numbers. The well-merited success of this book made him a literary celebrity, and his subsequent labours have sustained his high reputation, notwithstanding the falling-off in humour and strength of some of his latest productions. Mr. Lever has made a school of his own, and has retained the leadership of it. He is the gay and light-hearted captain of those jolly rollicking novelists who delight in fox-hunting, horse-racing, deep drinking, loud singing, late dancing, jaunty duels, reckless flirtations, insolvency, blazes and pistol practice. And who like Mr. Lever, unless it be Mr. Frank Smedley, can leap a vicious horse over a yawning chasm or a brick wall, twelve feet high, or carry away an heiress from a thousand rivals, or squander an estate in the character of a jolly good fellow, or shoot a friend dead with perfect sang froid, or spit down a Frenchman's throat? Such are the incidents, and such the tone of Lever's best novels, which unquestionably are in their way indescribably amusing, and laughter-provoking books. Mr. Lever has laid all Irishmen under a deep debt of gratitude;

for the effect of his descriptions of their humour and high courage has been to create amongst all classes of English society, a cordial good-will to every member of the Irish nation such as never before existed on this side of the channel. Another not less valuable consequence of the jovial rattling fictions is the military ambition they have fostered in the minds of our youth during the long term of European peace that preceded the Crimean war.

In 1842, Mr. Lever undertook the management of the "Dublin University Magazine," but he did not long continue in the post of editor of that excellent periodical. In 1845 he returned to the Continent, and since that time has resided principally at Florence.

G. H. LEWES.

THOUGH Mr. Lewes is better known to the world as a biographer, and perhaps the best philosophical and critical essayist now living, he is the author of at least two excellent novels, "Ranthorpe" and "Rose, Blanche, and Violet."

Born in London in 1817, the biographer of Goethe was educated in part abroad, and partly by Dr. Burney at Greenwich. On completing the education of boyhood, he entered a Russian merchant's office as a clerk; but displeased with the prospect of a career of commercial industry heexchanged the accountant's pen for the scalpel, and for some time directed his powers to the study of medicine. Unable, however, to endure the sight of surgical operations, he withdrew himself from the hospitals, and going to Germany passed two years in carefully preparing himself for the literary profession. Immediately on his return to London his pen made known its capabilities; and from that time his never flagging wit and commanding endowments have