In everything, Mr Reade seems to distrust the effect of moderation and simplicity. His picture of gaol life errs by excess, and he wearies our emotion by taxing it too repeatedly; the admirable inspiration which led him to find his hero and heroine among Berkshire homesteads, is counteracted by such puerile and incongruous efforts at the romantic and diabolical, as the introduction of the Jew, Isaac Levi, who is a mosaic character in more senses than one, and the far-seeing Machiavelianism of the top-booted Mr Meadows; and even when he is speaking in his own person, he lashes himself into fury at human wrongs, and calls on God and man to witness his indignation, apparently confounding the importance of the effect with the importance of the cause. But the most amazing foible in a writer of so much power as Mr Reade, is his reliance on the magic of typography. We had imagined that the notion of establishing a relation between magnitude of ideas and magnitude of type was confined to the literature of placards, but we find Mr Reade endeavouring to impress us with the Titanic character of modern events by suddenly bursting into capitals at the mention of ‘THIS GIGANTIC AGE!’ It seems ungrateful in us to notice these minor blemishes in a work which has given us so much pleasure, and roused in us so much healthy feeling as It is Never Too Late to Mend; but it is our very admiration of Mr Reade’s talent which makes these blemishes vexatious to us, and which induces us to appeal against their introduction in the many other books we hope to have from his pen.