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A recent review in a leading journal of France bears testimony to the great popularity which has been obtained in that romance-reading nation, by the writer of whom we are now to offer some account. The estimation in which he is held by his own countrymen is evinced by the large sale which each new production of his pen successively commands. In America his writings have been extensively read. They have all been translated into German, and some of them into Dutch. Dramas have been founded upon them; their more striking passages have become as familiar as household words; and their subjects, in some important instances, at least, are associated with the most memorable features of English history.

The biography of a writer who has secured so prominent a position may be supposed calculated to awaken a more than ordinary curiosity; not merely with respect to those early dawnings of intellect, and those traits of personal character to which a deep interest always attaches, but in relation to the family from which he has sprung. Happily, in the present instance, we are able to gratify the reader's curiosity.

William Harrison Ainsworth unites, in his own name, the names of two families, which, in the eminent success of various members of them, had obtained celebrity long prior to the present generation. Amongst his paternal ancestors are, Robert Ainsworth, the well-known scholar, and author of the Latin Dictionary, and Henry Ainsworth, the Brownist, who flourished at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The latter was one of the most profound Hebrew scholars of his time, and author of "Annotations upon the Old Testament," and of a translation of the Pentateuch. From these we come to the father of the living descendant from this learned stock, Thomas Ainsworth, of Manchester, a solicitor in very extensive practice.

This gentleman, though descended from a family residing at Plessington, in Lancashire, was born at Rosthorne, in Cheshire, a village which he always remembered with affection, and where, dying in June, 1824, he was interred. Manchester, however, the stage on which his active life was passed, benefited most largely by the ardour and zeal with which he devoted himself to the promotion of public improvements. He was one of the main instruments in causing the rebuilding and widening of one of the principal thoroughfares─Market-street, and though he did not live to see the work accomplished, his name must always be honourably connected with it. Of rather an irritable temperament, perhaps, he was known extensively for a singular liberality of character and generosity of disposition. He was a man of taste and vertu; uniting, with a fair degree of classical scholarship, considerable proficiency in