that Mr. Russell has written. He shows especially the same
wonderful capacity for word painting. Nothing could be better than his pic- tures of sea scenery, of the terrors of tempests, the ominous stillness of calm, of all the wonderful phenomena of the ocean. In this kind
of writing he is still, we think, unsurpassed. But as a story of life at sea, the Strange Voyage is of but indifferent interest, not to be named with some that we have seen before from Mr. Russell's pen. It is an ungracious and unpleaeing thing to say that he writes too much ; still, it has to be said. If this story had been cat down by a third at least, it would have been much improved. We should not have had, for instance, all those nauseating pages about sea-sickness. The tale would have been equally developed if Mr. Hanley had not been so ill and had not lost hie false teeth overboard (a somewhat too farcical incident to our taste). If three volumes were de rigueur, a looser type might have been used, and would have been more agree- able to read. We do not mean to say that Mr. Russell's novel is not
better by far than the average ; but it is not as good as it should be, not up to the high standard which his former work has led us to expect.
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