Melincourtis usually considered the least interesting of Peacock's novels; and in the strictly comparative sense that is to say that it is the least interesting of a group, every one of which has peculiar and exceptional interest — the statement is no doubt true. The defects of the book are very obvious, and exceedingly easy to account for. [jami long Hall had been very popular; and it was only in the course of nature that the author should repeat his successful experiment. But Head'long Hall had been by no means free from faults; and it certainly was not out of the course of nature that they should reappear in the new venture. In the very noteworthy introduction which the author wrote nearly forty years later, and which contains the promise of Gryll Grange as supplement to complete the satire, it is not unimportant to observe that he pays no attention to any thing but the satirical purport. A man of seventy, satiated with business and not specially hungering after popularity, was not perhaps very likely to discuss his own novels in detail, even to the extent to which Scott and other persons of irreproachable taste have discussed theirs in separate or collected editions. But it is not extravagant to take his silence as a kind of indication of his point of View.