A Fool's Paradise. By Thomas Archer. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)—No one
can complain, at all events, of Mr. Archer for not giving his readers enough in his three volumes. These are crowded with incidents and characters, and are very tolerably readable. The horrible is not too largely employed ; the plot is constructed with sufficient skill ; and there are one or two personages in the story in whom, without being a prey to a devouring anxiety, it is possible to feel a reasonable amount of interest. The characteristic of the book, however, as compared with the multitude of novels, is the care with which it is written. Mr. Archer has a style not exactly of his own, because it belongs, as it seems to us, to a school of writers who resemble Mr. Dickens, just as a good minor poet nowadays resembles Mr. Tennyson, but still not a mere string of words put together to tell a story.
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