Various

The North American.—The very head and front of the offending party journals, oracular, dignified, and eminently solemn. Doctor Bird’s leaders have a stately look in solid column, and his political articles read as if they had been subjected to a very patient drill before showing themselves to the public eye; but his fine genius flashes out the moment he touches a congenial subject. Of all American writers we look upon him as the best qualified to conduct a literary journal, or a monthly review. But, alas! he is a martyr, who must groan under the daily responsibilities of a party organ, with a hearty disrelish of its duties. Why should two such men as Bird and Bryant be sold into slavery in politics, and be thus comparatively lost to the lovers of polite literature? “Independent,” the Washington correspondent of the journal, dashes in like Saladin, and wo to the Christian who gets a full stroke of his scimitar; he is cloven to the chin, or has something to nurse and to remember. His egotism has been objected to by those who dislike his slashing style, but that, as much as his correctness of information, has given his correspondence character. He is at least fearless in the use of his weapon, and strikes at high and low with equal strength and temerity. Hennis gives us once in a while his touching little essays, conceived in the quiet beauty of Mr. Chandler’s style—the Gamaliel at whose feet he sat and learned. For the rest, we do not like the paper. It is heavy, cautious, and cruelly cold and selfish.

The Inquirer.—The model of a daily family paper, marked by continued and unwearied industry, and beaming with the kindly nature of its editor. Its ample pages are crowded with well-chosen selections and active scissoring of news paragraphs; not, however, always carefully pruned and clipped down. It is only once in a while that Mr. Morris shows us that he can write, and his Saturday Readings are full of the warm impulses and genuine kindness of the man, but are written more for purposes of good than to display his powers. Occasionally he warms up in his general articles, and lets out a spark or two, shows us a glimpse of the wealth he hoards, and causes us to wish for continued examples of the ability he possesses. In his political leaders he sometimes is forced by unfair opponents into a little causticity at the opening of his article, but he relents before he gets through, and will most likely give his “friend” a chance to back out of his blunder. He has not the heart, though he possesses the strength, to press his antagonist to the wall, and to pin him there. Mr. Morris has an agreeable, ready and devoted coadjutor in Mr. Crump, a man of various learning and diligent application. This journal is shockingly “made up,” to our taste, and is all over disfigured with staring black head-lines, which look to our eye like the sable of a hearse—its “postscript” is our particular horror.

The Daily News.—The absence of Judge Conrad from the daily press seems to have reinvigorated his powers, and has given additional force to his pen, and fire to his thoughts; like an unprisoned eagle, with a spring he darts to the skies and gazes in the sun. Some of the finest articles he ever wrote have appeared in the News. Every subject that Judge Conrad touches, seems to have been fused, as in a furnace, and the metal flies off in lumps from his gigantic mind. His intellect illumes and pervades every part of his subject, and when he drops it, there is nothing more to be said. His compact, all-grasping sentences, may furnish subjects for whole leaders to others, but the vitality has been extracted, and any treatment of the topic is tame and impotent in contrast. He does not, however, always seem to know the power of the words he uses, and will give a whack with his sledge-hammer with a will at a fly, which would effectually knock down an ox. Hence he should never write short paragraphs upon unimportant topics—his style is too ponderous. The News, as a political sheet, is well managed, barring some desire, occasionally manifested, to pull, for personal ends, the strings of its influence; but it is sadly deficient in mercantile news and facts. At this writing, too, it is shamefully brought out, and is made up as if the matter had been sifted over the form, and then locked-up and printed, and very badly printed at that. Mr. Sanderson should look to this, for the general editing of his News is too good to come before the public under so great a disadvantage.

The Public Ledger.—Unquestionably the best penny paper that has ever been established—showing in all its appointments the very perfection of mechanical execution, and in its news collection and collation, sleepless enterprise and vigilance, as well as persevering ability. Its leaders are unequal, for the most part written with great force and adroitness, upon topics familiar or of practical utility, but occasionally insufferably stupid and dull. On scientific topics it affects the ultra-learned. We always drop the Ledger when it gets upon “oligies.” Mr. Lane, whose quiet humor occasionally gleams out in his short editorial articles, like lightning from the edge of a summer cloud, is unquestionably the best news man in our daily press; clear and discriminative, you always find in his columns all that ought to be said of any and every news fact, and no more. A nicety of judgment very rarely attained, and never in our experience so fully, as in the case of the late Mr. Holden of the Courier.

The Sun.—Graced by a good humor that no annoyance can ruffle, but occasionally inclined to mischief. Carelessly giving a whack, regardless of consequences, and forgetting it at the same instant. We regard Mr. Wallace as a most able man in any paper; enduring, persevering, and always on the alert. We know of no one in his department of a newspaper who can for so long a time continue to perform downright hard, honest good labor. His nerves and his temper are equally enduring. He appears to have been born where they sing “Old Virginy never tire,” and to have lived through life, the music, the temper, and the sentiment of the song. The topmost bubble of his heart always sparkles. He is, too, what we like, a pretty good hater, though with a good deal more philosophy than is often practiced, in taking his revenges. With his editorials, his Son makes a capital newspaper, agreeable, gossipy and gay. The news is filled in with the coolness of an experienced hand, and with the uprightness and newspaper devotion of his father, he will one day stand as high.

The Pennsylvanian.—Col. Forney is the best political editor that his party has ever had in Philadelphia—discerning, prompt and fearless. He deals, however, too much in light skirmishing, and pops his enemy off once in a while from an unsuspected cedar-bush, merely to show the accuracy of his aim. But he is an able tactician, and when he does close fairly, his opponent finds him a tough and sinewy customer. His articles seem for the most part to have been dashed off at a heat, and lack the polishing touch. He often, too, uses a hard word for its sound where another would be more effective. Occasionally he sits down in earnest, blocks out his ground, and makes sore and steady advances; and especially when he has occasion to defend Mr. Buchanan, his intellect is fully aroused and on the alert—he then writes with his full vigor and spirit, and writes well. His partner, Mr. Hamilton, is one of the most capable business printers that we know, and every thing in his department is marked by exactness and proficiency. The press-work of the Pennsylvanian, on each issue, is what the magazines would call “a specimen number.”

The Times.—A jaunty, crotchetty, impudent little sheet, filled with quibs and quirks, and a sort of laughing philosophy that shouts over seriousness. Its editor, would, if he could, go to his own funeral dressed in ribbons, and wearing a look of rejoicing. He has the happiness of never seeming for a moment anxious; and you might as well punch at a wreath of smoke with a foil, as attempt to interest him in a serious controversy. He will answer your arguments with a pun, your serious reasoning with a laugh, and will set ridiculously on end your most carefully rounded sentence, and go to hacking at its grammar. Having got you out of humor, he will decline all controversy with you, if you cannot observe the decencies and proprieties. So that the man who urges a controversy with Du Solle, has his anger for his pains, and is fuming while he is chatting and laughing unconcernedly upon some other more agreeable topic. Yet the Times has never given him scope to show the real ability and general information he possesses. He should be in the Ledger with Lane, he would settle the “ologies” in short metre.

The Bulletin.—Our only evening paper, but managed with great enterprise and vigor. Mr. Peterson’s strong Saxon words and nervous style, combined with his various and correct learning, make the leading articles of this journal among the ablest that we read anywhere, and have stamped a high value upon the leading column. There is a want of editorial tact in its less imposing, but equally important digest of news and facts. It has all the news, but it has it in bulk, and looks at times, with its heavy, solid nonpareil, like a little man covered with black patches, or as if part of the paper had gone into mourning for the absence of an itemizer. It is always up, however, to the full requirements of the public in its telegraphic despatches, and it had—what has become of him—the writer of money articles that was most regarded here. For the rest, it affects a very nice morality in regard to the theatres, which we do not like, and do not pretend to understand. It is too deep for us. It advertises for the theatres, but does not notice them. Are they wrong, or right, or neither? We suppose there must be a nice line, which casuists who examine morals with a microscope have detected.

G. R. G.

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Dear Graham,—Poor Tom says, “Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women: keep thy hand out of plackets, and thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend.” Without misconstruing this text more than texts are usually misinterpreted, I opine, that from those same “lenders’ books” of past generations the current literature of our day is being manufactured. The vast shapes of the Past have overshadowed the Present, and we are in the umbra of the eclipse. Pray tell me if there is room left in the whole length and breadth of the world for an epic, without trenching upon the preËmption rights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso and Milton? Then as regards dramatic poetry—“ahem! Shakspeare.” Wit and humor? What, after Chaucer, Rabelais, Ben Jonson, Cervantes, Butler, Swift, Pope, Sterne, the Spectator writers generally, Fielding and Smollet? Are there any new Continents to be discovered? Our own Irving, to be sure, has been cruising among beautiful summer islands, and returned with a wondrous store of wealth—jewels and gold tissues, fragrant gums, Hesperidean apples, painted Salvages, flowers and odorous spices, to the world unknown before. The gentle Elia has embroidered incomparable tapestries, and formed the school of the age. Scott gathers in his mighty arms the banners of a hundred conquests, and for melodious versification (after Spenser) Coleridge, Shelley and Moore, in

“Numbers moving musically,”

have filled the world with harmonies, to which no echoes answer. Who shall sweep the strings of passion after Byron! Truly, with much thankfulness for the kind intentions of those who have written for Posterity, we might add that it is a pity they did not leave Posterity a little chance to write for himself. But since it is so, let us, with due credit, make free for a time with some of those same “lenders’ books,” for as George Wither quaintly says—

“We are neither just nor wise,

If present mercies we despise;

Or mind not how there may be made

A thankful use of what we had.”

Room, then! for one of Dante’s Angels—

Compare this with Milton’s Raphael—

Or the flight of Satan—

Do you not think Dante’s angel the most spiritual? He says,

And Milton—

The thought here is evidently borrowed from the Italian “lender’s book.”

There is a strange propensity to follow these lofty flights; as when in looking from an eminence we feel a temptation to breast the blue ether below us. We are fairly in the wake of Satan when he

And now since we are pinion-mounted, like Icarus or Daniel O’Rourke, let us select a few more familiar specimens of flying. “Look you,” from Coleridge—

And lo! from Shelly on eagle,

The Viking’s war-ship, from Longfellow’s Saga of the Skeleton in Armor is a brave picture,

And Dryden, in his Annus Mirabilis, hath likewise a warship that flies!

But of all winged things the sky-lark is the bird of the poets. Hear Shakspeare—

Or this from Shelley—

Coleridge, too, in his Ancient Mariner—

And Wordsworth in that beautiful couplet—

There is a sweet little bird in the description of a Summer’s morning, by Thomas Miller, which I would fain add to this goodly company—

But alas the prettiest part of it is borrowed from one of those same “lenders’ books.” John Bunyan’s—no less. The Interpreter takes Christiana into the “Significant Rooms,” where he shows her that “one of the chickens went to the trough to drink, and every time she drank she lifted up her eyes toward heaven. ‘See,’ said he, ‘what this little chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by receiving them with looking up,’” And now, having winged our way from angels to John Bunyan, let us lay these same lenders’ books upon the shelves until a future period.

Truly thine,

Richard Haywarde.

Mrs. Smith has written nothing so well calculated to convey to the majority of readers a clear sense of the richness, originality, and elevation of her genius, as this wonderful little story. It evinces a high degree of creative power, being an organic product of the mind, with a central principle of life, and vital in every part. The scenery, events and characters have all a living connection with the leading idea of the work, and illustrate each other. The form is the ever facile and yielding instrument of the plastic spirit within, and varies with the variations in the story and the changes in the thought or feeling expressed. By a felicity of nature, Mrs. Smith appears instinctively to subordinate the material to the spiritual; and thus by making the former simply the symbol by which she expresses the latter, she spiritualizes matter, and makes it the living body of the soul. She vivifies and vitalizes the form until it becomes o’er informed with spirit. Natural objects as used by the poet, derive all their effect from being the pictorial language of impassioned thought, the visible image being but the embodiment to the eye of the viewless force which penetrates and animates it; and fitly to employ objects as exponents of thoughts, a firm, decisive grasp of spiritual realities, of something lying back of all expression, is necessary. The moment the material predominates over or precedes the spiritual, it becomes so much dead matter, without significance, because without life. A great excellence of the present story is the constant dominion exercised by the soul over or through its forms of expression, and the physiognomical character of the style and imagery. When we thus speak of it as pre-eminently spiritual, we of course imply that it is thoroughly alive.

But the wonder of the book, and the quality which will give it a permanent place in American literature, is the sure and fine audacity with which it brings the supernaturally beautiful and the supernaturally terrible into vital relations with human life, without any shock or jar of the unnatural to disturb the exquisiteness of the combination; and this is done in a manner purely original, awakening no reminiscences of German or English supernaturalism, and giving unmistakable evidence of being drawn from the writer’s own life and mental experience. Indeed, by the very constitution of her mind, Mrs. Smith seems to see things in their spiritual relations; consequently she not only looks at things and into things, but she looks through them, and discerns the supernatural region from which they proceed and on which they depend. This vision into a sphere above sense, is accompanied by an imagination of sufficient force to shape what she sees into a form palpable to sense, and thus to reach the mystical elements in other minds through their sensuous imagination. This vision and this faculty are possessed by all high and powerful natures, and the test of the reality of the powers is in the originality of the products. Similarity, even when it does not approach plagiarism, indicates the intervention of another mind, and by suggesting spectacles casts ominous conjecture on the soundness or reach of the eyes. Now the supernatural, as it appears in this volume, is strictly individual and peculiar, evidencing that the authoress has herself contemplated, face to face, the spiritual truths she has embodied.

While the present story is thus eminently a work of creative imagination, working in the region of the supernatural, and ranking “strange combinations out of common things,” it is at the same time intensely human, touching at every step on some affection or aspiration of the human heart, and full of the glee and gloom of our common life. As every thing is realized to the eye and imagination, and the vital relation between the natural feeling and the preternatural agencies is clearly represented, the reader is conscious of no unharmoniousness in the general impression left on his mind by the whole work, but simply feels as though he had been brought nearer to the life of things, and discerned evil and good in their spiritual natures. With a power of thought, as felicitous in its delicacy as in its strength, moral beauty and moral deformity are both seized in their intrinsic principles, and embodied in such a manner that the material form ceases to be the veil and becomes the vehicle of the nature it encloses.

To the shaping imagination which this work indicates, we must add that form or expression of the imaginative faculty, by which things inexpressible in images are suggested by cunning verbal combinations, or which escape in the peculiar turn of a period, or which are breathed to the inner ear of the mind in the rhythm of a sentence. This mystical charm, this elusive, dreamy, ever vanishing and yet ever appearing grace, gives to the whole work a character of strangeness almost bewitching, and produces that fine and faint intoxication of the imagination which makes it ready to receive and accredit wonders with as much faith as it commonly awards to possibilities. It is this quality also which makes it impossible to convey the moral of the story in any didactic proposition. It has a profound moral, but it is a moral which refuses to be comprehended in an ethical axiom, being felt in the brain and “felt along the heart.”

We have been so much engrossed by the merits of this story that we have little space left to notice some faults. The notes should not be retained at the bottom of the page, but should be transferred to an appendix. Occasionally the imagination of the authoress stutters in its sublime talk, and gives fragments of gigantic images instead of wholes. Here and there the philosophic prevails over the imaginative, and discourse monopolizes a sentence which should be strictly sacred to representation. But the sweetness, the tenderness, the beauty, purity and majesty, with which the work is so replete, hardly allow even the critical reader to be captious; and to the uncritical, the absorbing interest of the story would be sufficient to hide even prominent defects.

Book-writing and book-publishing, according to the most approved doctrines of the division of labor, are to be kept strictly apart, and commonly there yawns a natural gulf between the two, as wide and deep as that which separated Lazarus and Dives. The present volume, however, illustrates this seemingly impossible combination, the author being also one of the publishers, and it must be confessed that the intellectual and mechanical execution reflect credit on each other. Mr. Fields has a mind of great flexibility and fertility, and occasionally he has compressed within the limit of this volume a large variety of matter, answering to the mirthful, the pathetic, the satirical, the tender, and the impassioned. He not only does not repeat himself, but the work is too small adequately to express the whole range of his poetic faculty. The two longest poems in the collection are the “Post of Honor” and “Commerce,” both of them originally pronounced before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, and each including many topics under the general subject. These evince a keen, shrewd eye for practical life and character, and the satirical portions are characterized by a mingled wit and humor unexcelled for general sharpness. “The Post of Honor” is by far the best, and its pictures of life, both serious and mirthful, are exceedingly vivid and true. The versification evinces a complete mastery of the heroic couplet, in all its ease, energy and harmony of flow, and it is spangled with fine felicities of fancy and original verbal combinations. The passages relating to Lamb and Grey, are replete with a quiet searching pathos, which touches the inmost nerve of sensibility.

Many of the shorter poems have already had a wide circulation through the newspapers. “Fair Wind,” originally published in “Graham,” and “The Dirge,” we have seen in the poetical corner of at least a hundred journals. The new ballads and lyrics, now first published, are among the best in the whole collection. “The Ballad of the Tempest,” the “Pair of Antlers,” and “Common Sense,” are very brilliant and beautiful. “Life at Niagara,” and the “Alarmed Skipper,” are good specimens of mirthful poetry as distinguished from versified mirth. “Children in Exile,” and “A Bridal Melody,” have an intensity of deep and sweet feeling, which wins its way into the very core of the heart. We might refer to others as worthy of notice as these, but we must be content with quoting one instead of naming many, and we accordingly present our readers with a most beautiful specimen of blank verse, addressed to Rogers:

Lamartine, with many of the high qualities of genius, is deficient in one of the most important—Common Sense. He is a fine and eloquent singer of his own idealized and idolized self, but is gifted with very imperfect powers of objective perception. He sees nothing as it is, but every object is more or less a mirror of self. This is equally true whether the object be Mont Blanc or a Paris mob. All his descriptions of scenery, though often rising to a strain of rapturous eloquence and beauty, are never accurate, even in an elevated poetical signification of accuracy. Different scenes, in different climes, are all enveloped in one atmosphere, and all stand for one tyrannizing class of emotions. Lamartine is a sentimentalist, and no sentimentalist can celebrate any nature but his own, or consider the universe as worth any thing in itself. The excellence of the present volume consists in its subject admitting of a strictly lyrical treatment, and it accordingly is full to running over of Lamartine’s strong but narrow genius, and is resplendent with glittering sentiment and decorative imagery. The work is not long enough to tire by its egotism and fine writing, and is closed before admiration has subsided from the interjection into the yawn of satisfaction. A nature so rich as Lamartine’s might fill even a larger book without exhausting its wealth of sentiment or thought.

Mr. Warren’s works on Law are almost as entertaining as his novels. The present book is full of matter important to the young lawyer, and interesting to the general reader. All who are accustomed to have dealings with the profession, can obtain from this little volume many useful and some lucrative hints. The two points on which Mr. Warren expends his sense and his eloquence are knavery and incapacity, as those qualities exist among lawyers. As many lives and more fortunes depend on the existence of the opposite qualities in the profession, this volume will be equally valuable if it succeed either in expelling rogues and dunces from the law, or in enabling clients to detect them.

The author of this little volume has availed himself of the interest excited by the late disclosures in California, to construct a story of marvelous adventures in that region. In regard to probability the work is half way between Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights. As every thing wonderful relating to California is greedily devoured, the disclosures of this work will undoubtedly receive their due attention. They are nearly as much entitled to belief as many of the newspaper accounts.

The editor of this volume is Professor of the Spanish Language and Literature in Columbia College. He has so arranged his matter as to remove all possible obstacles in the way of the learner, and to conduct him, step by step, into the heart of the noble language of Castile. The selections are admirably made. The volume is not only well adapted for schools and colleges, but for the private student, and we trust it will induce many to study a language which will give them a key to the versatile and fertile genius of Lope de Vega, the mystical beauty of Calderon, and the profound and genial humor of Cervantes.

This work has produced a considerable sensation in England, being a well-written protest against the Church Establishment, supported by a long array of facts and arguments. The author was for twenty-two years an Episcopal clergyman, and was at last forced by his reason and conscience into his present position. Mr. Noel does not attack the doctrines of the Church, but its union with the State, and he attempts to prove that this union is condemned by the letter and spirit of the Bible, is unjust, inexpedient, and productive of a host of evils, from which free churches are exempt.

This is one of a series of historical books for the people, prepared by Mr. Abbott with his usual felicity of condensation and simplification. The series so far includes the Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Alexander the Great, Charles I. and the present volume, and others are to follow. The author manages his matter with much art, and while few can read his volumes without an addition to their information, they must be invaluable to a large class of minds almost altogether deficient in historical knowledge.

Here, in the space of one small volume, is condensed a large amount of available information on the steam engine, its principles, the practical details of its structure, and its application to mines and mills, as well as steam navigation and railways. The author evinces an intimate practical acquaintance with his subject, and his work, while it is invaluable to the engineer, possesses great interest to every reader desirous of fathoming the mystery of the structure and operation of the steam engine.

POETRY BY THEODORE A. GOULD.

MUSIC COMPOSED BY THEODORE VON LA HACHE.