zealous to the last degree. Still less was it Fanny's fault. She was, as he expressed it, "the noblest of her sex." The truth is,--and to the shame of that city be it spoken,-there was no Don Quixote in Boston! If Boston could have boasted of so much chivalry, Mr. Blank would have been cudgelled, and Fanny avenged.

Having utterly failed to create any kind of a sensation;--having waited in vain to "receive friends" at the Tremont, it was judged expedient to make a grand sally upon the town. An open barouche was accordingly ordered, and Fanny, richly attired, and attended by noble John Walter, rode ostentatiously through the streets. A kind of sensation was produced, but not the right kind. People looked, and laughed, and winked. Some said, "Lucky John Walter!" Others, who knew Fanny, said, "Poor John Walter!" Still Fanny was let alone; nobody troubled her; the world turned round, and Boston turned with it, the same; and Mr. Blank remains uncudgeled to this day.

And so Fanny and the redoubtable John made haste to evacuate their Sebastopol, withdrawing their forces quietly, and returned, inglorious, to New York.

XII.

A KEY TO "RUTH HALL."

ANNY FERN'S latest literary effort is the production of a novel entitled "Ruth Hall." Much curiosity has been excited in the minds of the public as to the originals of her various portraitures. It will be fully satisfied by the perusal of the following criticism from the pen of an able reviewer.

"Wouldn't I call things by their right names? Would I praise a book because a woman wrote it?"-Ruth Hall, p. 307.

"We have called Fanny Fern a literary star. We should qualify the expression. There is no clear, strong lustre, no steady splendor, no mild, benignant twinkle, to Fanny. She flashed into our sky like a meteor, seemingly larger than Jupiter, and for the moment more ruddy than Venus,

more flaming than any planet or fixed star. Or perhaps we should liken her to a rocket-going up with a great rush and whiz, then paling, dying, falling, and finishing up with a loud, angry pop, and a sudden shower of little fiery tadpoles, dropping on the head of her enemies.

"The 'loud, angry pop' came with the publication of her last work, 'Ruth Hall,'-a book that appears to have been exploded in a fit of desperation, to revive the writer's sinking fame, and to revenge herself on her relatives, and everybody she imagines ever injured her. Fortunately, the rockets' fiery droppings are harmless as moonbeams, and there is little but hiss, and whiz, and crack, to its anger;-else some very respectable families had been blown to atoms, and entirely devoured and eaten up forever by the fiery tadpoles.

"How we used to admire Fanny! We never, indeed, saw much to love in her writings, but the snap, and vigor, and originality of her style, was truly refreshing. We could never sufficiently praise these qualities in her early sketches. He power was partly owing to native genius, partly to the circumstances of her life. She was a fullgrown woman when she began to write. The age of feeble sentimentalism was passed.

She had

seen the world; enjoyed society; known adversity. She had been twice a wife, and twice a mother; had lost one husband by death, and another by-no matter what. In years she was forty; in experience at least a hundred and forty. And all this life and knowledge she had kept bottled up, like old wine. How it sparkled and foamed when the wires were cut and the cork blown out! She poured off those first sketches, bubbling, frothing, effervescing, like prime champagne newly opened. Wine of this quality soon deadens; but Fanny kept pouring out, determined to make up in quantity what was wanting in flavor; and now-in 'Ruth Hall'-she has squeezed the bottle and flung it at the heads of the public.

"Speaking of this queer book, the New York Courier says, 'If the writer ever showed the manuscript to her friends, they acted most cruelly towards her, in not advising her to throw it into the fire.' We think so too. We have never seen so sad a revelation of a woman's heart. There are some flashes of genius in the book, but there are more flashes of that unmentionable fire, supposed to be familiar to wicked souls.

"The principal characters in Ruth Hall bristle all over with iron spikes of selfishness and cruelty. The able critic of the Boston Post declares that

'art would never admit such stony-hearted monsters in a story of real life.' Now, 'Ruth Hall' is understood to be an autobiography. That it was intended as such by the writer, there can be no doubt in the mind of any person who knows her and reads her book. Following this view of the subject, we have, first and foremost among the monsters, Fanny's own father. He is the 'old Ellet' of the story-a man who 'thinks more of one cent than of any child he ever had;' who coldly leaves his daughter and grandchildren to suffer almost the extremes of want and privation; who would not, indeed, throw them a crumb, were it not that, as a church-member, he has a 'Christian reputation to sustain,' and fears public opinion. The caricature is gross and awful. Yet it is not even a caricature. Fanny (Ruth Hall) has daubed the hideous picture of an impossible character, and scrawled beneath it the angry words, 'This is my father! let all the world see and abhor him!' Goneril! O, Regan! could woman's hate do more? Oh, dear and sweet revenge upon a parent! because, forsooth, the white-haired old man, who, even now, totters daily up his office stairs to earn a livelihood, possessed too much calm wisdom to impoverish himself in order that she might sit a queen--because he deemed it sufficient, in all love and jus

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