Various

“Earth on my soul is strong—too strong—

Too precious is its chain,

All woven of thy love, dear friend,

Yet vain—though mighty—vain!

“A little while between our hearts

The shadowy gulf must lie,

Yet have we for their communing

Still, still eternity!”

Hemans.

THE LETTER.

“Frederic, my dearest—pride of my heart—love of my youth—my husband! A sweet, yet most mournful task is mine, to write to you words which you may not read until my voice is hushed in the grave—till the heart that prompts is cold and pulseless—till the hand that traces is mouldering into dust. Yes, I am called from you—from our children—and you are not near to comfort me with your love in this dark season. But I must not add to your sorrow by thus weakly indulging my own. Though it may not be mine to feel your tender hand wiping the death-dew from my brow—though I may not pant out my soul on your dear breast, nor feel your strong, unfailing love sustaining me as I go—yet I shall not be all forsaken, nor grope my way in utter darkness; but leaning on the arm of our Redeemer, descend into ‘the valley of the shadow of death.’

“And now, dearest, I would speak to you of our children—our children, of whose real characters it has happened that you know comparatively little. I would tell you of my hopes and wishes concerning them—would speak with all the mournful earnestness of a dying mother, knowing that you can well understand the mighty care at my heart.

“There is Frederic, my ‘summer child,’ our bright-eyed, open-browed boy, almost all we could desire in a son. I resign him into your hands with much joy, pride and hope. Even were my life to be spared, my work in his education were now nearly done. I have had much happiness in remarking his talent, his enthusiasm, his fine physical organization, his vigorous health, his gay, elastic spirits,—and far more in being able to believe him perfectly honest and truthful in character. Oh, my husband, can we not see in him the germ of a noble life, the possible of a glorious destiny?

“Yet, Frederic has some faults, clear even to my sight. I think him too ambitious of mere greatness, of distinction as an end, rather than as the means of attaining some higher good. Teach him, dear husband, that such ambition is but a cold intellectual selfishness, or a fever thirst of the soul; a blind and headlong passion that miserably defeats itself in the end. Teach him that the immortal spirit should here seek honor and wealth only as means and aids in fulfilling the purest and holiest, and, therefore, the highest purposes of our being;—to do good—simple good—to leave beneficent ‘foot-prints on the sands of time’—to plant the heaven-flower, happiness, in some of life’s desolate places—to speak true words, which shall be hallowed in human hearts—strong words, which shall be translated into action, in human lives. And oh! teach him what I have ever earnestly sought to inspire—a hearty devotion to the right—a fervent love of liberty—a humble reverence for humanity. Teach him to yield his ready worship to God’s truth, wherever he may meet it—followed by the multitude strewing palm-branches, or forsaken, denied and crucified. Teach him to honor his own nature, by a brave and upright life, and to stand for justice and freedom against the world.

“I have seen with joy that Frederic has an utter aversion to the society of fops, spendthrifts and skeptics. I believe that his moral principles are assured, his religious faith clear. Yet I fear that he is sometimes too impressible, too passive and yielding. His will needs strengthening, not subduing. Teach him to be watchful of his independence, to guard jealously his manliness. I know that I need not charge you to infuse into his mind a true patriotic spirit, free from cant and bravado—to counsel him against poor party feuds and narrow political prejudices. God grant that you may live to see our son if not one of the world’s great men, one whose pure life shall radiate good and happiness—whose strong and symmetrical character shall be a lesson of moral greatness, a type of true manhood.

“Our daughter Pauline is a happy and healthful girl, with a good, though by no means a great intellect. She has a dangerous dower in her rare beauty, and I pray you, dear Frederic, teach her not to glory in that perishing gift. She is not, I fear, utterly free from vanity, and she is sometimes arrogant and willful. I have even seen her show a consciousness of her personal advantages toward her less favored sister. You will seek to check this imperiousness, to subdue this will—but not with severity, for with all, Pauline is warm-hearted and generous. You know that she is tall for her age, and is fast putting away childish things. It will not be long now before as a young lady she will enter society. I surely need not charge you to be ever near her—to watch well lest a poor passion for dress and a love of admiration invade and take possession of her mind, lowering her to the heartless level of fashionable life; to teach her to despise flatterers and fops—to shrink from the ostentatious, the sensual, the profane, the scoffing and unbelieving. I feel assured that you will imbue her spirit with your own reverence for honest worth, and your own noble enthusiasm for truth and the right—an enthusiasm never lovelier than when it lights the eye and glows on the lips of a lovely woman.

“For my daughter Louise, our youngest, I have most anxiety, for she seems to have inherited my own physical delicacy, and has moreover an intense affectionateness and a morbid sensibility, which together are a misfortune. Dear husband, deal gently with this poor little girl of mine, for to you I will confess that at this hour she lies nearest my heart. Her whole nature seems to overflow with love for all about her, but the sweet waters are ever being embittered by the feeling that she is not herself an object of pride, scarcely of affection to us. She is very plain, you know—yet, look at her, she is not ugly—her plainness is that of languor and ill health. Poor Louise is seldom well, though she never complains, except mutely, through her pallor and weakness. She also inherits from me an absorbing passion for reading and study, and perhaps you will think it strange in me when I call upon you—earnestly entreat you to thwart and overcome this, if possible—not forcibly, nor suddenly, but by substituting other pleasures and pursuits, thus turning the current of her thoughts.

“Though I do not remember to have ever been very strong, yet I do not think that I had at the first any disease in my constitution. Yet what was the course pursued in my training? It was unfortunately discovered that I was a genius, and so I was early put to study—my young brain stimulated into unhealthy action, the warm blood driven from my cheek and lip, the childish light quenched in my eye, by a thoughtful and sedentary life. I wasted long bright mornings over books, when I should have been riding over the hills, or frolicking with the waves—rambling through the healthful pine-woods, or fishing from the rocks, inhaling the invigorating ocean breezes. And sweet evenings, instead of strolling abroad in the summer moonlight, I sat within doors, alone, wrapt in deep, vague reveries; and on winter nights, I read and wrote, or pored over Euclid, or Virgil, in my close, dull chamber, instead of joining the laughing, chatting circle below, mingling in the dance and merry game.

“Yet, it was not alone my passion for study which prevented me from taking that vigorous exercise, and indulging in those out-door amusements so absolutely necessary for both physical and mental health, but ideas of propriety and feminine delicacy carefully inculcated and wrought into my character. I have since seen their folly, but too late. Habit and old associations were too strong for the new principles.

“Ah, had my early training been different—had I been suffered to remain a child, a simple, natural child, through the appointed season of childhood—had my girlhood been more free and careless—less proper, and studious, and poetic, I might now have been in my happiest season, the prime of a rich and useful life. But as it is, now, when my husband is at last returning home for his life-rest—when my son is soon to take his first step into the world—when my daughters need me most, at thirty-five, my course is already run! Oh, Frederic, see that our little pale-faced Louise does not pursue her mother’s mistaken course—does not re-live her mother’s imperfect existence. Take her out into the fields, on to the beach—teach her to ride, to row, to clamber—to fear neither sunshine nor rain—let fresh air in upon her life, get her young heart in love with nature, and all will be well with the child, I doubt not.

“Your own dear mother has promised to take home our children when I am gone, and have charge of them, with your consent, for some years to come. The education of our daughters you should direct, for you alone know my plans and wishes. As to their marriage, that seems so far in the future that you will scarcely expect me to speak on the subject. I can only say, dearest, teach our children in the coming years, never to be content with a union which promises less of love, harmony and trust, than have made the blessedness of ours.”

---

“I wrote the foregoing, dear Frederic, more than two weeks ago, and now, I must say farewell to you, for my hours are indeed few. I think I may not see another morning on earth. I have of late suffered much about midnight, from extreme difficulty of breathing, and something tells me that I shall not survive another such season. But I am not dismayed—God is yet with me in his sustaining Spirit, and I fear no evil.

“And now, my husband, before I go, let me thank and bless you for all your tenderness and patience toward me, in the years gone by. And oh, let me implore you not to sorrow too bitterly when I am dead. We have been very happy in one another’s love, and in our children—our children still left to you. Can you not say ‘blessed be the name of the Lord?’

“I enclose with this my hair, just severed from my head. I remember to have often heard you say that you might never have loved me but for this happy attraction—my one beauty. I desired my sister to cut it for you, and she tried to do so, but the scissors fell from her hand, and she went out, sobbing bitterly. Then I looked around with a troubled expression, I suppose, on our Frederic—he understood it, came at once to my side, and calmly, though with some tears, cut from the head of his dying mother this sad legacy for his poor absent father. Is he not a noble boy?

“I will not say to you farewell for ever, for I know your living faith in God, who will bring us home, where there shall be ‘no more pain, nor sorrow, nor crying.’ And, Frederic, if it be permitted, I will see you once more, even here. To me it seems that my love would find you, wherever you might be in the wide universe of God, and that my freed spirit would seek you first—over the deep, through night and tempest, cleaving its way to your side. But as heaven willeth, it shall be.

“And now, farewell! best and dearest, farewell! My beloved, my beloved! Oh, that I could compress into human words the divine measure of the love which glows and yearns in my heart, at this hour. That love the frost of death cannot chill, the night of the grave cannot quench. It is bound up with the immortal life of my soul—it shall live for thee in the heavens, and be thy eternal possession there.

“May God comfort thee in thy loneliness, my love, my husband. Again, again farewell!

“Again, again farewell!

Now indeed the bitterness of death is past.

And yet, once more, farewell!

Thy Dora.”

Mr. Boker was favorably known as a dramatic poet previous to the publication of his present work, but “Anne Boleyn” indicates a firm movement forward when compared with “Calaynos.” It is more impassioned in style, action and thought, more intense in conception, more artistic in execution, with sentiments more richly poetic, with characters more vigorously discriminated.

The subject of the drama is taken from one of the actual tragedies of history, with which every schoolboy is familiar, and it is therefore admirably adapted for dramatic treatment. The names of the characters are familiar to all, but here we have substantial persons attached to the names, living out a portion of their lives before our eyes, with almost every act and word symbolical of character. Such a representation increases our knowledge of history, by conducting us near to its heart and life, giving us the concrete meaning of such terms as irresponsible power, court intrigues, political unscrupulousness, and unbitted passion.

The plan of the drama is the exhibition of the various intrigues of the courtier statesmen of Henry VIII. to murder, under a legal form, his imperious but large-hearted wife, and the final triumph of their villany over justice, and of his lust over common humanity. In the most exacting law of dramatic composition, that which demands the mutual connection of the parts, and a relation of each with the main idea of the piece, the author has, we think, been very successful. There are no characters and scenes, hardly any thoughts and sentiments, which could be omitted without injury to the design, which do not contribute to the general effect of tragedy. The style, also, though it occasionally evinces some immaturity, is commonly close to the matter, and takes its tone and coloring from the characters. The diameters themselves are strongly conceived and sustained. King Henry, Norfolk, Richmond, Wyatt, Smeaton, Queen Anne, Jane Seymour and Lady Boleyn, are especially felicitous. We could give many specimens of the author’s dramatic powers had we space for extracts, but we prefer to commend the drama to the reader’s attention in its wholeness. There are, however, scattered over the piece, morsels of beauty and wisdom which spring naturally out of the events, and yet have a universal application. Queen Anne, in repenting of the harsh imperiousness of her judgments of others, drops a remark which every modern reformer should adopt as a preventive check on the fertility of his tongue:

The scene in which the queen attempts to regain the king’s affections, by sending his mind back to the period of their early love, is very touching and beautiful; and until that sly witch, Jane Seymour, appears, the reader almost believes that the crowned disciple of lust is capable of fidelity to a sentiment. We give a few passages:

“Anne Boleyn” is not only a fine dramatic poem, considered in respect to character and situations, but it is as interesting as a novel, and continually excites those emotions which exact attention, even in the least cultivated reader. Taken in connection with the author’s previous work, it evinces not only genius, but a genius which grows. The perusal of it has strongly impressed us with the feeling that the country, in him, has a new poet, and one whose present productions are even richer in promise than performance. We cordially wish him an appreciating public, and trust that he will not lack stimulants to renewed exertion.

“Saint Leger” has been considered by some critics to be of German origin; it has been thought to bear a striking family likeness to a class of books of which “Wilhelm Meister” is the type and paragon. This erroneous opinion must have arisen either from an imperfect acquaintance with German literature, or from not giving to “Saint Leger” that careful analysis which it certainly deserves. The class of German novels, to which “Saint Leger” has been compared, cannot, strictly speaking, be said to possess any plot. There is no regular sequence of events—no relation of parts to a whole—no dramatic bearing of character upon character, to produce an ultimate result—no apparent effort to close the story at the very start, which an influx of conflicting circumstances alone prevents, and toward which it ever struggles, overcoming obstacles and softening down discordances, until the end is gained by an unforced blending into one harmonious mass of all the opposing elements of the plot. But these very qualities, for which we look in vain through “Wilhelm Meister” and its fellows, “Saint Leger” possesses to a degree beyond any work of a semblable character with which we are acquainted; and from the crowning result of its plot arises what has been called, from the days of Æsop to those of Walter Scott, the moral of the story. Without such a moral, expressed or implied, any fable, however well told in detail, is a crude, lifeless mass, wanting altogether that vital principle which alone can give fiction endurance. It is to this fact that posterity will owe its safety from the pernicious influences of the thousand well written immoralities that crowd their betters from our modern book-shelves, while the downfall of these literary falsehoods must as surely make way for the continued popularity of such books as “Saint Leger.”

That “Wilhelm Meister” and kindred works are entirely without moral, we will not attempt to say; but that they want the directness of purpose which everywhere characterizes “Saint Leger,” and the consequent dependence of action upon action, in order to work out a clear and significant result, we may say, without fear of controvertion. A lie, written or spoken, is always a bungling thing. The straggling, touch-and-go manner of hinting out a story—admitting the author not to be thoroughly depraved, and willing, like the George Sand School, to blazon his vices, and glory in his iniquities—seldom fails to betray the false and shallow principles upon which it is founded. Truth seeks the light; the author of “Saint Leger” does not shun it. There is a zealousness of purpose, and a lucidness of style and exposition upon every page of his book, which at least proves our author’s conscience to be in his work, and must forever free him from the imputation of endeavoring to hide falsehood, either under the covering of silence or of sophistry.

The object of the author of “Saint Leger,” if we understand him aright, is to trace the career of an individual soul in search of a faith. The innumerable external trials, temptations and dangers through which the hero passes, forms one of the most interesting stories we have read for many a day. To this moving narrative another, and entirely original interest is superadded, by exhibiting to us, not only the immediate effects of surrounding events on the hero’s feelings and actions, but in tracing up their consequences, first, to the changes in his character and moral nature, and last, to the ultimate results produced on his religious faith. Our author appears to be a sturdy opponent of all forms of intellectual faith. The hero is accordingly taken through the whole round of modern metaphysics; and issues from them weary and dispirited, having learned only to doubt, not to believe. In the latter pages of the book, the instructive lesson of the whole is taught, viz., that faith is founded, not on the intellectual, but on the moral nature; that all strivings after faith, through the intellect, can but end in doubt and pain; that the elements for the formation of a perfect faith lie around us on every hand, as much within the reach of the illiterate as of the learned, which

that faith is not to be encompassed in creeds, or laid down in philosophies, but is the simple language of the heart appealing to the will for support.

These are bold thoughts, boldly spoken. The sectarian may base his faith upon other and far different grounds, or may think the opinions of other men sufficient foundation for his own belief; he cannot, however, arrive at a higher or a purer state of hopefulness than that reached by “Saint Leger” through his fiery martyrdom of thought and feeling.

We will not forestall the reader’s interest, by attempting a sketch of our author’s plot. Let it be sufficient to state that the story appears to be evolved of necessity from the agency of the actors in it, the natural result of their characters and the actions to which such characters must lead; not a tissue of ingeniously contrived plots and counterplots, into which a certain amount of sham humanity has been thrust, to give the whole a life-like air. This is a dramatic excellence, rare since the Elizabethan era, which even the glorious creations of Scott do not possess. Whoever has read “Guy Mannering,” and afterward seen its miserable dramatized counterfeit, will be able to appreciate our meaning, and to understand how sadly the works of the greatest modern novelist stand the dramatic test. After witnessing such an experiment, there will be no difficulty in recognizing the immeasurable distance between Shakspeare and Scott.

Saint Leger’s adventures are not completed at the close of the volume, and from the concluding words, we should judge the author intended a continuation of his story. We shall anxiously await the appearance of another volume; meanwhile we heartily commend this to the studious attention of our readers.

Mr. Giles, as a lecturer, is celebrated all over the country, and few public speakers equal him in the power of thrilling a popular audience. The present volumes prove that his influence as an orator has not been purchased at the expense of purity of style or accuracy of thought, and that as a writer he presents equally strong claims to consideration and regard. The subjects of the work run into various departments of thought and information, and they all evince meditation and study. The lecture on Falstaff, one of the best papers in the volume, exhibits the author’s philosophical discrimination, as well as his forgetive fancy and overflowing humor. The essays on Crabbe and Ebenezer Elliott are two grand expositions of individual genius, and at the same time indicate a knowledge of the condition of England’s poorer classes, and an intense sympathy with their character and sufferings, which prompt many a passage of searching and pathetic eloquence. The two lectures on Byron are hardly equaled by any other criticisms of his genius, in respect to the balance preserved between sympathy with his misfortunes and indignation at his satanic levities and caprices. Goldsmith, in another paper, is represented with a sunny warmth, and sweetness of style, which carries his image directly to the reader’s heart. Carlyle, Savage, Chatterton, and Dermody, are the subjects of the remaining articles on persons, and each is analyzed with much sympathetic acuteness.

The subjects of the other essays are The Spirit of Irish History, Ireland and the Irish, True Manhood, Patriotism, The Worth of Liberty, The Pulpit, Music, and Economies. In these Mr. Giles’s genius is admirably displayed in its peculiar sphere of action, that of great ideas and universal sentiments. He is, in many important respects, an excellent critic and expositor of men, but he is most eloquent when he commits himself daringly to a sentiment, ignores its practical limitations, and glows and gladdens in the vision of its ideal possibilities and real essence. Here he stirs the deeper fountains of the heart, makes our minds kindle and our aspirations leap to his words, and bears us willingly along on his own rushing stream of feeling. Here all his powers of fancy, humor, imagination, pathos and language, are thoroughly impassioned, and act with a vital energy directly upon the will. The communion with a mind so thoroughly alive cannot be otherwise than inspiring; and to the younger portion of readers, especially, who are finely sensitive to the heroic in conduct, and the grand in sentiment, we would commend these beautiful and quickening orations, glowing, as they are, with the loftiest moral principles, and leading, as they do, to Christian manliness of thought and conduct.

In reading the present volumes, the image of the orator instinctively starts up before the imagination, as he appears in the desk, flooding the lecture-room with his tones, and evoking tears or laughter from an audience whose sympathies he has mastered. Every note in his glorious voice, from its sweet, low, distinct undertone, to the high, shrill, piercing scream of its impassioned utterance, rings through the brain the moment the listener becomes a reader. The volumes have a sure, appreciating and extensive public, even if their circulation be confined to lecture audiences; but they are certain of a wider influence.

It is natural to inquire how often a book which has pleased us much has been the object of admiration to those who preceded us in our journey through life—a road on which a book is a “friend which never changes.” We could not help having this feeling, as we looked at a very recent edition of Montaigne’s Essays, (Philad’a. J. W. Moore, 1849,) and began to rummage up our recollections and invoke the aid of our Lowndes and QuÉrard—supposing that we might do a small service to the inquirer into such matters, by showing him how often the public taste of other countries had called for editions of our favorite classic—for such he is, in French as well as English.

We give the editions in the order of dates, beginning with the French—

Montaigne (Mich. de) Ses Essais, Livres, 1 & 2. Bordeaux, Millanges. 1580, in 8vo. The original edition, which is, however, incomplete.

The same work, with the addition of a third book, and many additions (600) to the two first. Paris, Langelier, 1588, in 4to.

An edition at Brussels, Foppens, 1659, 3 vols. 12mo. and one at Paris, the same year, in 3 vols. 12mo.

The French admit, that of the earlier editions, that of Touson, which appeared in London in 1724, with the remarks of P. Coste, in three volumes 4to., is the finest. A supplement to it was published in 1740.

Editions appeared at Paris in 1725, (3 vols. 4to.) at the Hague in 1727, (12mo.) in London in 1739, and 1745, reprints of Coste’s edition. There were editions in Paris in 1754, and in Lyons in 1781, and subsequent editions in Paris in 1783, 1793, and 1801 and 1802—since which, editions have followed, in that city, in rapid succession, and more than twenty, with the “Notes of all the Commentators,” are to be had for the asking.

The English translations are, first:

“The Essays of Michael, Lord of Montaigne, translated by John Florio, London, 1603, folio.” Florio was the Holofernes of Shakspeare. This edition, with a portrait of Florio, by Hole, again appeared in 1613, and 1632.

“Essays of Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, made English by Charles Cotton. London, 1680.” There are editions in 1711, 1738, and 1743.

A new edition of this translation appeared in 1776, with many corrections, which was reprinted in 1811, but by whom the corrections were made does not appear. The last edition, to which is added his “Letters and Journey through Germany,” and which is an edition of his works prepared by Mr. Hazlitt, from which the Philadelphia edition has been printed.

This beautiful volume, the finest in point of pictorial illustrations of a beautiful series, deserves a much more extended notice than we are capable of giving it at present. Mrs. Osgood occupies, among American poets, a place peculiarly her own, where she is without a peer, and almost without a rival. She is the most lyrical of our poets, her nature being of that fluid character which readily pours itself out in song, and quick and sensitive to impressions almost to a fault. A hint from an object is taken, and instantly her soul surrenders itself to the impression, and sings it as if her whole life was concentrated in the emotion of the moment. Her mind, being thus so readily impassioned, glides easily into various forms of character and peculiarities of situation, which she has never actually experienced. Most of the songs in the volume, though they burn and beat as if the writer’s life-blood was circling through them, are essentially dramatic lyrics—the position of the author being an imaginative not a personal one.

A long article might be written on the purity, delicacy, tenderness and strength of feeling which this book evinces, and the exquisite melody and richness of the verse. The signs of a sweet and passionate poetic nature, seeking the ideal by a fine instinct, and finding in song the appropriate expression of its inward harmony, are over the whole volume; and we trust its bird-like music will win for it a place in American homes by the side of the more meditative works of Bryant and Longfellow.

This volume, eloquent in style and entertaining in matter, beyond almost any similar work which has been issued for years, was published but a month or two ago, and has already reached a second edition. The materials of which it is composed are essays and stories originally contributed to different periodicals, and apparently dashed off, without a thought of their being eventually collected and made into a book. The impression which the whole leaves upon the mind, notwithstanding the separate parts were thus composed, is eminently an individual one, and indicates that the authoress has sufficient force of being and character to write in all varieties of mood without parting with her personality, without assuming to be what she is not. In short, she is a contradiction in fact to the Mahometan doctrine, assented to by many Christians, that women have no souls. The present volume indicates a soul, and a broad and powerful one—a soul to feel and to represent with equal intensity the heroic in conduct and the tender in sentiment; a soul which penetrates every faculty of her mind, whether it be understanding or humor, with a vitality, and flashes out, in some passages, in the very eloquence of disinterestedness and heroism. The defect of her mind, at present, seems to be its tendency to exaggeration—to transfer to objects the emotions they excite in herself, and to make them stand for qualities which they only rouse in enthusiastic natures like her own. The volume is splendid in promise, and with all its merit rather suggests than limits her capacity. A mind so fresh, active, powerful and impassioned as hers, cannot fail to reach the high excellence on which her eye is evidently fixed.

This work is introduced with the high endorsement of Prescott, the historian, and is worthy even of his commendation. The authoress is an accomplished Spanish lady, who has long resided in the United States, and who writes English with ease and dignity. The subject is entirely new, and the materials gathered from sources of which the general reader is profoundly ignorant. As a work of industry and research, therefore, it is of considerable importance to the student of history; but the authoress has contrived to make it equally interesting to the common reader, by the variety of novel circumstances she has introduced, and her anecdotes of court life. The present volume contains the Gothic queens, those of Oviedo and Leon, of Arragon and of Castile, comprehending a thousand years, from 415 to 1475. The early period to which the volume is confined, though it makes each biography short, makes each full of surprising matter. In the hundred queens presented to us, there are all varieties of feminine nature exhibited in connection with enough remarkable and romantic events to form the plots of numerous novels and dramas.

The work is elegantly printed, and will, we hope, find a large class of readers. It should be continued in the manner with which it has been commenced, and we can hardly believe that annals, relating to a country so essentially romantic as Spain, and written by one whose whole soul is penetrated by her nation’s spirit, should not be received with marked popular approbation.

Among the many good things which the accomplished and enterprising publisher of this work has done for the cause of classical English literature in the United States, the present cheap and elegant edition of Goldsmith ranks with the first. It is the only American edition which contains the new matter which Prior has collected. The first volume alone has a sufficiently large number of new essays to make every lover of Goldsmith procure the edition.

Goldsmith is so universal a favorite, and the leading characteristics of his genius are so impressed on the public mind, that it would be useless here to speak of his sly, searching and genial humor, his shrewd and accurate observation, the generosity of his sympathies, the wealth of his fancy, and the lucid simplicity and sweet fascination of his style. Let the reader peruse the present edition in connection with Irving’s charming biography of Goldsmith, and we will guarantee that the works and life of the subject will be a possession to his imagination forever.

The popular estimate of this work is indicated by its passing through nine large editions in seven years. The present, which is the tenth edition, is almost a new book. The editor has corrected faults of judgment and selection, which necessarily occurred in the first edition, and had availed himself of the benefit of the criticisms, friendly and unfriendly, which it called forth.

The poetical literature of the country has also grown considerably during the last seven years, and Mr. Griswold has therefore added many exquisite pieces of Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell and Poe—excluded some poems, and put better ones by the same authors in their place—and introduced into the body of the book liberal selections from the new poets, Palmer, Lunt, Hoyt, Clarke, Parsons, Cooke, Fields, Wallace, Hirst, Mathews, Taylor, Boker, Read, Legare and Butler, are among the additions. The book, in its present form, gives a fair idea of American verse in all its varieties of individuality and style. It is still open to objections, and is doubtless capable of further improvement; but we think that the editor has more to fear from the anger of poets who suffer from the austerity of his taste, than from that of readers who sometimes suffer from its exceeding tolerance. As a whole, the book is very attractive, and we wish it another seven years of success, and a passage into edition twentieth.

This collection of metrical pieces, inspired by the muse of frolic and fun, is sure of popularity. The writer’s favorites among the poets, seem to be Pope and Hood, the bard of satire and the bard of puns; and his own poems are full of good specimens both of keen hits and felicitous word-twisting. The two satires, “Progress,” and “The Times,” show a vivid perception of the ludicrous in conduct and life, and “The Proud Miss Bride” puts words on the rack to good purpose. The author’s love of wit and humor amounts to poetical inspiration, and the volume contains much of the poetry as well as the versification of mirth. Mr. Saxe has not a bit of gall in his disposition, and his severity is as genial as it is gingerly. Buoyant spirits dance through his satire, and there is nothing waspish even in its sting. Nobody can read the book without envying the writer’s happy disposition, or without having some of it communicated to himself.

The author of this curious dramatic poem is Mr. Judd, a clergyman of Augusta, in Maine. Like Lord Timothy Dexter’s book, it is “a pickle for the knowing ones.” In the strangeness of its individuality rather than the originality of its thoughts is its hold upon the attention. The writer has poetry in him, but it is most capriciously brought out in connection with all sorts of moral and semi-moral commonplaces and freaks of religious whim. All the proprieties of poetry are violated, not from an inward law of dissent, but from an opinionated dislike of established methods. The author has genius, but not sufficient genius to produce a harmonious poem out of his materials. Still there are few poems, lately published, which can be read with less fatigue, for the audacities and oddities on every page are perpetual stimulants to the mind. In passages, too, the volume is finely and powerfully poetical; and in a certain juxtaposition of refined spirituality with the solidest practical vision, the book is a prophecy of the author’s future excellence.

This elegant volume is the first of a new issue of the author’s works, edited by herself, with prefaces and notes. The portrait and autograph of the author are given in this volume, and the remarks with which she prefaces it have the kindliness and good sense which are so characteristic of her nature. “The Neighbors” is one of the most charming idealizations of actual life we have ever read, and nowhere is domesticity so winningly represented. An author, like Miss Bremer, who is now personally abstracting so many hearts in this country cannot fail to have purchasers for this edition of her writings.

This volume contains seven interesting papers, originally contributed by the author to periodicals. They are all striking specimens of Mr. Headley’s peculiar powers of narration and description—a little less flushed in style, perhaps, than his Napoleon, but indicating the same vigorous abandonment to the subject. The best article is that on Alison’s History of Europe. The Biographies of Alfieri, Cromwell and Luther, are executed in a style which will stamp their leading traits indelibly on the popular imagination. The article on Griswold’s Prose Writers, which closes the volume, is unworthy of Mr. Headley, and should have been omitted from the collection.

From the preface we learn that the present volume has been issued to operate against an unauthorized edition of the author’s magazine articles, published by some bookseller in New York, on his own account. Every respectable bookseller and every respectable book-buyer should avoid the pirated edition, on the principle of common decency and justice.

Professor Greene is one of our ablest historical scholars, especially in the department of Italian literature and history, and the present work, embodying the thoughts and observations of many years, is a valuable contribution to thoughtful and elegant literature. The author combines the narrator and the thinker in just proportions, and connects with admirable tact, thoughts that quicken with biographical details which interest the mind. The subjects of the papers relating to Italy are Petrarch, Machiavelli, Manzoni, Verrazzano, The Hopes of Italy, Historical Romance in Italy, Reformation in Italy, Italian Literature in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, and Contributions for the Pope. The article on Libraries is one of the best ever written on that subject. Perhaps the most generally agreeable paper in the volume is that on Charles Edward. In this we have a flowing and animated biography, replete with novel facts, and as interesting as a romance. The author’s style, in all the papers, is sweet, flexible, graceful and condensed, indicating high culture, but a culture which has developed instead of deadening all that is peculiar in his mind and heart.

This elegantly printed volume is published for the benefit of those Christians who have no clear idea of the difficulties to which the faith “was subjected in the earliest stages of its existence, or the severity of the conflict through which it was obliged to pass.” If it reaches all of those to whom it is addressed, it will have more readers than Macaulay’s history or Dickens’s novels, for the subject is one on which the strangest ignorance prevails even among pious and intelligent Christians. Dr. Kip divides the obstacles to the eventual victory of Christianity into five classes—Judaism, Grecian Philosophy, the Licentious Spirit of the Age, Barbarism and the Pagan Mythology, each of which is represented with much vigor and beauty of style, distinctness of thought, and wealth of information. It is a book which deserves to be in every family which professes a regard for the Christian faith, as it meets a universal want; and it will save the general reader a great deal of labor and time, embodying as it does, in a lucid and animated style, the results of a student’s researches in the whole field of early ecclesiastical history.

This is an interesting and well written story of American life, the production of a shrewd intellect, and admirable in its practicable application.

To Subscribers.—The proprietorship of Graham’s Magazine having passed, by purchase, into other hands, all letters and communications of whatever kind relating to the business of this periodical, will hereafter be addressed to Geo. R. Graham, Editor.

SAMUEL D. PATTERSON & CO.