A Ward of the Golden Gate. By Bret Harte. (Chatto
and Windus.)—Mr. Bret Harte's humour is of the indescribable kind ; the only thing definable about it is its irresistible quality. One feels it, as Mr. Morfin's hearers felt his violoncello-playing, "in one's bones ;" like Joey Ladle, one takes it in "at the pores." There is abundance of this rare humour to be so taken in and felt in his latest work, which is in some respects a liner story than its immediate predecessor, "A Waif of the Plains," although a less perfect work, because the author has permitted himself to be preposterous in one instance in the former, while he never outstepped the modesty of Nature in the latter. The Ward herself is a delightful creature, and the mingling of courage, frankness, impulse, and refinement, real innocence, and arch, lovely girlishness, in her character, is made to show out against the background of her mother's story, and her own pathetic ignorance, with skill not to be surpassed. The dashing originality of the notion of the Trust is captivating, and the group of men who furnish the action of a story composed of humorous and pathetic elements after the unique fashion of Mr. Bret Harts, is perhaps his most remarkable achievement in prose. Colonel Pendleton is the great success of the book ; his devoted "nigger," George, a black Caleb Balder- stone, is, after a certain point, its one failure. It would be hard for even Mr. Bret Harts to beat the first interview between Hathaway, the juniorest guardian of the ward, and Negro George, the episode of the barber's shop, and the counting of the Colonel/is" rents ;" but George in Germany is mere caricature. The closing scenes are indeed grand ; one remembers Colonel Pendleton as one remembers Colonel Newcome. Mr. Stanley
Wood has illustrated the story with spirit and sympathy ; but was it necessary to snake everybody, the ward included, so remarkably plain ?
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