WORDS BY JOHN S. ADAMS.
COMPOSED AND ARRANGED FOR THE PIANO FORTE
BY VALENTINE DISTER.
Presented by George Willig, No. 171 Chestnut Street.—Copyright Secured according to Law.
In the silence of the midnight,
When the cares of day are o'er,
In my soul I hear the voices
Of the loved ones gone before;
And the words of comfort whisp'ring,
Tell they'll watch on ev'ry hand,
And I love, I love to list to
Voices from the spirit land,
And I love, I love to list to
Voices from the spirit land.
2.
In my wanderings, oft there cometh
Sudden stillness to my soul;
When around, above, within it
Rapturous joys unnumber'd roll;
Though around me all is tumult,
Noise and strife on every hand,
Yet within my soul I list to
Voices from the spirit land.
3.
Loved ones that have gone before me
Whisper words of peace and joy;
Those that long since have departed,
Tell me their divine employ
Is to watch and guard my footsteps:
Oh, it is an angel band!
And my soul is cheered in hearing
Voices from the spirit land.
GEMS FROM LATE READINGS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF KATE WALSINGHAM.
Oh, there is many a spot in this every-day world of ours as bright and beautiful as those of which we dream, or go miles away to visit and admire; but we must seek for them in the right spirit, ere the dimness will pass away from eyes blinded by the love of foreign novelties. Our own land, ay, even our own city—the crowded mart of commerce, and the vast haunt of poverty and crime, is rich in many a quiet nook, which, although it might arrest the attention if depicted on the gemmed page of the picturesque annual by some summer tourist, it is considered plebeian to notice as we pass them in our daily walks.
We have sat beneath the vines and blue skies of Italy, and heard from her moonlight balconies such strains as made us hold our breath to listen that we might not lose a note ere the perfumed breeze bore it lingeringly away: and in after years, in those English balconies we have described, wept, beneath the same moon, tears that had more of joy than grief in them, at some rude and simple strain which, sung by loved lips, made the charm of our careless and happy childhood. We have stood awe-stricken before the walls of the Colosseum, at Rome, and dreamt of it for evermore! But we have likewise paused opposite the Colosseum in the Regent's Park, investing it in the dim twilight with a thousand beauties that made it an object of interest. We can well remember lingering in the neighborhood, before the mimic church, or convent, as we had been taught to call it, of St. Catharine, with the moonshine gleaming through its arches, and the flickering lights appearing here and there in the diamond-paned windows, watching eagerly for the appearance of those white-robed nuns with which our childish fancy had peopled that quiet place—wondering that they never came. And amid all the architectural glory of foreign churches and cathedrals, since visited, have failed again to realize that simple love of, and faith in the beautiful, which then invested every scene with its peculiar charm. Where the mind makes its own picturesque, it never yet failed to find materials, and is often gifted with a strange power to charm others into seeing with its own loving eyes! So the poet immortalizes the humble home of his boyhood, and in after years men make pilgrimages to the time-worn stile, the
Rustic bridge—the willow tree;
Bathing its tresses in the quiet brook;
which his genius has redeemed from obscurity, and rendered hallowed spots for evermore.
BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.
Oh! tell me not of lofty fate,
Of glory's deathless name;
The bosom love leaves desolate
Has naught to do with fame.
Vainly philosophy would soar—
Love's height it may not reach;
The heart soon learns a sweeter lore
Than ever sage could teach.
The cup may bear a poisoned draught,
The altar may be cold,
But yet the chalice will be quaffed—
The shrine sought as of old.
Man's sterner nature turns away
To seek ambition's goal;
Wealth's glittering gifts, and pleasure's ray,
May charm his weary soul;—
But woman knows one only dream—
That broken—all is o'er;
For on life's dark and sluggish stream
Hope's sunbeam rests no more.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.
How strange it is to those who are in some sense new to the world, to see the way in which time plasters over wounds which we should have imagined that nothing could have healed: wounds which we should have expected to see bleed afresh at the sight of the inflictor, as it was said of old that those of the murdered did at the approach of the murderer. Sometimes we almost feel as if nothing was real in that singular existence called the world. Like the performers, who laugh and talk behind the scenes after the close of some dreadful tragedy; we see around us men who have ruined the fortunes and destroyed the happiness of others, women who have betrayed and been betrayed, whose existence has been perhaps devoted to misery and to infamy by the first step they have taken in the path of guilt, and whose hearts, if they did not break grew hard; we see the victims and the destroyers, those who have loved and those who have hated, those who have injured and those who have been injured, mix together in the common thoroughfares of life, meet even in social intimacy, with offered hands and ready smiles; not because "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy;" not because "To those who forgive, shall much be forgiven;" but because what is genuine and true, what is deep and what is strong, takes no root in that worn-out soil on which we tread, thrives not in that withering air which we breathe in that fictitious region which we live in, and which we so emphatically and so presumptuously call the world.
BY MRS. LUELLA J. CASE.
CHARITY.
Speak kindly, oh! speak soothingly,
To him whose hopes are crossed,
Whose blessed trust in human love,
Was early, sadly lost;
For wearily—how wearily!
Drags life, if love depart;
Oh! let the balm of gentle words
Fall on the smitten heart.
Go gladly, with true sympathy,
Where want's pale victims pine,
And bid life's sweetest smiles again
Along their pathway shine.
Oh, heavily doth poverty
Man's nobler instincts bind;
Yet sever not that chain, to cast
A sadder on the mind.
BY G. P. R. JAMES.
He was a fool, and not a philosopher, who said that uncertainty was the just condition of man's mind. In trust, in confidence, in firm conviction, and in faith, is only to be found repose and peace. Assurance is what man's heart and understanding both require, and the very fact of the mind not being capable of obtaining certainty upon many points, is a proof of weakness, not of strength.
EDITOR'S TABLE.
The Close of the Year.—The year is closing on us—and the change suggests reflections, which, if rather melancholy, may nevertheless be profitable. We acknowledge that the divisions of time are rather arbitrary—and therefore may vary, as they do vary, in different parts of the world. But whenever we arrive at one of these important epochs, whatever that may be, and wherever it constitutes a point in the popular calendar, we have passed one period of our life, and have so much the less to spend.
If we feel the rapidity of time's march in our ordinary festivity, and regret the approaching dissolution of the pleasant assembly, by how much the more do we feel if we pause to think that we are approaching the time when all our associations in life must cease, and we be remembered—not known—and that remembrance day by day growing less and less distinct, as new objects occupy the public eye, or new associations are taken up by those we leave. Nor would we "jump the life to come," by neglecting to make our approximation to that an occasion for such a solicitude as would lead to a preparation.
But we would not have all those reflections gloomy. We would not cloud the close of the year, nor the evening of life with moroseness, as if all were vanity that we had enjoyed, and all were vexation of spirit that was left. Such a use of the season would be a poor return for all the good things which Providence has wrought in our behalf. We know at this season of the year that the mountain summits are covered with snow, and in some places the drooping sides are whitened with the treasures of the clouds, but even these things, chilling as they may appear, are good in their season, and the beauteous covering of the hill-tops may glisten with the reflected rays of the sun, and seem to enjoy the visiter that has descended upon them. All the trees that yield their leaves to the season have for weeks been bare, ready to receive the weight of snow which might fall upon them, and teaching man that preparation is necessary to meet the evils of life and sustain its burthens. Here and there a few evergreens retain their foliage, and appear doubly beautiful amid the waste that is around them.
But it is not alone for their beauty that these objects are worthy of consideration—they teach also. They are full of instruction. Every leaf that glistens with winter's frost, or is crushed dry and rustling beneath our feet, has its lesson—it is well that all do not retain their position—they would be less monitory, less worthy our thought. Nature, in her use of foliage, acts upon the plan which the sybil of old adopted—she writes her lessons upon the leaves—and yet so arranges the truths they should convey, that they become more and more apparent, more and more valuable, as the hand of destructive time diminishes their number.
Elsewhere we have given reflections upon those events by which kingdoms and empires have been shaken in the year now coming to a close. Let us come nearer the heart, and speak of some of those changes by which human affections and individual attachments have been disturbed. Not, however, to quote the instance exactly—that would be to drag up into life the hidden sorrow, and expose to observation the grief which is sanctified for the recesses of the heart, whither in moments of leisure the wounded retire and sit and brood in profitable reflection over the affliction which Providence has allowed. We dare not drag up to day and its exposure each grief that lies buried deep in the grave of the mourner's heart. How truly beautiful, however, is the reflection that the stone of the sepulchre may be rolled away, and that in appropriate seasons the afflicted one makes a retreat from the business and the pleasures of life, and "goeth unto the grave to weep there." Sanctified—as beautiful—be the sorrow that hath not its exponent in the public assembly, that hath no signal by which its existence is to be denoted—no condition of countenance by which its extent is to be measured. Perhaps the sufferer had not yet obtained permission to call the object hers—and thus is deprived of the privilege of admitted mourning—how deep is that grief—it has known only the hope of life which takes with it all of the sunlight that makes the rainbow; without one drop of the storm from which that bow is reflected. Perhaps the young WIFE sits solitary in the chamber which affection has blessed, and pines amid the thousand emblems of the taste or customs of the dead—perhaps her grief is her inspiration, and she gives to story or to song the promptings of her sorrow, which the world supposes is the gift of joyous inspiration.
Perhaps the mother is pausing in the midst of renewed anguish for the departure of her gifted, her only child, and sits enumerating all his perfections, the greatest of which, and that which sanctified all other virtues, and hid the very shadowings of error, was his deep, constant love for her. Oh, how the maternal heart, smitten by the heaviest of griefs, bathes itself in the fountain of filial love; and when, at last, the over-wrought frame yields to the undermining sorrow, the mourner comforts herself with the reflection of the afflicted monarch of Israel, "I shall go unto him, he shall not come again unto me." These reflections, with all of blighted hopes which parent, lover, friend and patriot have indulged, the falling leaves of autumn suggest; but the evergreen tells us of the survival of affections, of friends, of beauty, and, perhaps, of attainments, and teaches us that while we bend, and may bend in bitter anguish—anguish long indulged beneath the rod of affliction—it is good for us also to kiss the rod—for it has the power of budding anew in the hand of Him who wields it; and the same might which made it the instrument of His afflictive dealings can make it also the means of after joy and peace.
Perhaps, upon the leaves that we examine, the sybil, with rearward glance, has recorded some event for joyous reflection. Have we not been made participants of high gratifications—domestic, social, public associations of instructive and pleasant operation? Have not new affections warmed the heart, or old ones sent out new tendrils to cling with a stronger hold upon us? Perhaps we have had the acquisition of wealth without the augmentation of desires, so that we can make ourselves happy by judicious distribution. Perhaps, above all, and over all, we are better, by the passage of the year, better by newly acquired, and especially newly exercised virtues—virtues that bless others, and, through them, bless ourselves. If so, surely we have grounds for pleasant reflections on the close of the year, and may hope that we have not lived in vain.
The virtues of the human heart are like the water-springs of the earth, their worth is measured by what overflows; nay, as an accumulation even of the purest water must become stagnant, profitless and offensive without an outlet, so what we call the virtues of man become useless and even injurious, unless they extend to others, by overflowing the fountain breast. Virtue is communicable; and those who associate with the good, find an influx of affection and piety, as the woman of faith was cured by touching the hems of the garment, that covered the source and example of all health and goodness. If we have sought to acquire good for ourselves, and to do good to others during the present year, reflections upon its approaching close need not be painful; it should be to us a source of high gratification, that, enjoying as we have enjoyed, and mourning as we have mourned, we are nearer the union of the good who have gone before us, and further from the ills that follow upon our footsteps; and as we close our year, or close our life, may we throw back from joyous, grateful hearts, a smile of virtuous pleasure, which shall enrich the stern clouds that have passed us with the bow of promise of pleasures that are to come. C.
Graham's Magazine for 1849.—The new volume of Graham's Magazine, to be commenced with the January number, will, beyond all doubt, be the most elegant volume that has ever been issued of this most popular of all the American monthlies. The ample experience and liberal expenditure of money by the publishers, the ability of its host of contributors, the editorial tact which will be brought into service, and the genius and skill of the artists engaged to embellish it, must more than sustain the high position it has heretofore held in public estimation. The magazine literature of this country is destined to a warmer appreciation in the public regard, as it becomes purged from the sickly sentimentality which degrades public taste, and when the first minds in the nation are found devoting solid thought to adorn and elevate it. A few years since, the highest aim of contemporary competition seemed to be to fill a given number of pages with the silly effusions of a class of writers whose feeble powers and false taste were gradually undermining public regard, and bringing this branch of national literature into contempt and disgrace, but the higher aims of the publishers of the now leading periodicals, evinced in the engagement of the brightest intellect of the country, have raised American periodicals to a scale second to none in the world.
Blackwood and Frazer, in England, and The Knickerbocker and "Graham's Magazine," in America, now stand side by side, and by paying liberally for talent, command the very highest. It may be doubted, however, whether in this country the force of periodical writing has not been in some degree impaired, by a diversion of the public eye and taste in the smaller class of magazines with feeble aims, to engravings and pictures, many of which are but the refuse of the English Annuals, and the efforts of second rate artists in this country; and also how far those magazines which are marked by ability, and which, as magazines of Art as well as of Literature, embracing in their object and scope, the improvement of a very laudable branch of art—that of engraving—as well as the adornment of the work, should be drawn aside into a competition in the number of their engravings, instead of the worth which should mark each one of them. It appears to us that this degrading of magazines into picture-books for children, by impoverishing the literary department to swell the number of wretched engravings in a department of art, so called, must impair the value and shorten the existence of any periodical thus conducted.
For ourselves, we have marked out a course in regard to the mere illustrations of this periodical, from which we shall not be diverted. We shall continue to furnish to our readers the most finished and elegant specimens of the American engraver's skill, keeping at the same time in view the value aside from the mere ornament of the engraving, thus catching the public desire in the portrait of a person who may have some claim upon posterity, even though the face may not be the most beautiful; and in sketches of such scenes as deserve to live in the pages of this magazine, either from their own great beauty, from their grandeur, or from association which gives them value to the American eye and mind.
The Female Poets of America.—Messrs. Lindsay & Blakiston have presented to the public a delightful volume prepared by Caroline May. It embraces biographical sketches, and extracts from the productions of many of our own native female writers, and serves to render us familiar with those whose sweet strains have often charmed our hearts. The style of execution of the volume in question, corresponds with the excellent character of its contents, and the authoress, publishers and printers have executed their respective parts with great skill and effect.
Burns, as a Poet and as a Man.—The admirers of the gifted Scottish bard, will find an interesting and well executed review of his character as a Poet and a Man, in a volume, prepared by S. Tyler, Esq., of the Maryland bar, and just issued by Baker and Schriver, of New York. We are indebted for a copy to Messrs. Lindsay & Blakiston, of this city, who are ever skillful in catering for the intellectual taste of their literary friends.
We lay our present number before our readers with feelings of pride and pleasure, confident of the admission, on their part, that a richer or more varied treat has never been presented in the pages of any magazine. Our contributors have supplied us with admirable articles—our artists have acquitted themselves with great ability—our printers have acted well their part—and now, we trust, our patrons will complete our gratification, by being as much pleased with the number before them as we are in making the offering.
We thank our editorial brethren throughout the country for the favorable manner in which they continue to notice our Magazine. They do us but justice when they say that all our efforts will be put in exercise to keep our Magazine in the enviable position we have so long occupied. Always in advance of every contemporary, we shall show in the new volume upon which we are entering, what enterprise, zeal and energy can accomplish in the elevation of the standard of literature and the arts.
Kate Walsingham.—This is another of Miss Pickering's delightful novels, just issued from the press of T. B. Peterson. The story is an interesting one, and the book abounds with brilliant and sparkling beauties.
Lays and Ballads, by T. B. Read.—A volume from the pen of Mr. Read, one of the most accomplished of our contributors, has just been published by Mr. Appleton. The lateness of the hour at which a copy reached us prevents us from noticing it at present as we desire to do. We shall therefore make it the subject of a paragraph in a future number.
J. Bayard Taylor, Esq.—A life-like portrait of our friend and co-laborer, J. B. Taylor, graces this number of the Magazine. We know our readers—our fair ones especially—will admire him; and we would remark, en passant, for their information, that well-looking as he unquestionably is, his merits in this particular are fully equaled by his good qualities of head and heart.
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. By John Stuart Mill. Boston: Little & Brown. 2 vols. 8vo.
Mr. Mill is almost the model man of science of his age. To habits of deep and thorough investigation, and rigid, penetrating, exhaustive thought—pursuing a principle through all the details of its application, and never stopping halfway to pause or digress—he adds a calm but strong sympathy with the philanthropic movements of the age; and the tendency of all his writings is to advance the cause of truth, justice and benevolence. But he is a reformer in a peculiar sense, not practically understood by many who bear the name. A comprehensive and patient thinker, and discussing every question bearing on the interest, happiness and elevation of mankind with a conscientious as well as rigid logic, he indulges in no vituperation, uses none of the weapons of passion and malice, and irresistibly conveys the impression to the most prejudiced mind that it is truth he is seeking, not the gratification of vanity or antipathy. The consequence is that he is the only radical thinker in England who is read by all parties, and who influences all parties. With more industry, mental vigor and scientific precision than Mackintosh, he has a great deal of that beneficence of spirit, that judicial comprehension, and that strict impartiality of understanding, which enabled Mackintosh to reach minds separated from his by the walls of sect and faction. Mill is one of those rare men who make no distinction between moral and logical honesty; who would as much disdain to utter a sophism as to tell a lie; and who can discuss questions which array the passions of a nation on different sides, without adopting any of the opposite bigotries with which they are usually connected. As a matter of course the prejudiced and the bigoted themselves, in those hours of calmness when they really desire to know the truth and reason of the things they are quarreling about, go to a man like him with perfect confidence. Thus Mill, a philosophical English radical, is ever treated with that respect which clings to a profound and conscientious thinker, even by the most violent of his Tory opponents. One of the late numbers of Blackwood's Magazine—a periodical accustomed to blackguard the men it cannot answer, and in which Mackintosh himself was ever treated with coarse invective or affected contempt—has a long article on Mill's present work on political economy, admitting its claim to be considered one of the greatest works of the century, even though it takes strong ground against many of the cherished absurdities of the Tory political creed.
The reputation of Mr. Mill was sufficiently established before his political economy was published. As the writer, over the signature of A., of several articles in the Westminster Review, such as those on Coleridge, Bentham, and the Privileged Classes, and the author of the profoundest and most complete treatise on Logic ever written, he needed no introduction to the public. "The Principles of Political Economy" is a book bearing on every page the decisive marks of his strong and accurate mind. It is a work after the model of Smith's Wealth of Nations, in which principles are always associated with their applications, and economical questions considered in their relations to social philosophy, and the general well-being of man. As, since the time of Adam Smith, political economy and social philosophy have both made a perceptible advance, Mr. Mill's work purports to supply the deficiency of a complete system of political economy, including all the latest discoveries, and combining a strict scientific exposition of the abstract principles of the subject with their practical applications. The result is that he has produced the most complete and satisfactory work of the kind at present in existence, and, on the whole, the most important contribution to political economy since the time of Adam Smith.
We, of course, have no space to refer at any length to his treatment of the different branches of his subject; but the book has one characteristic which we hope will have the effect to make it generally read. The style is so clear, vigorous, simple and lucid, and the illustrations so apt and copious, that the work can be readily understood by those readers who are commonly repelled by the dry and abstract character of other treatises on the science. The author intended that his book should be popular as well as profound, and has exerted his full strength of mind in simplifying the more abstruse principles of his subject; and we trust that his labor will not have been spent in vain. Every legislator, merchant, manufacturer, and agriculturist, every man who is in any way connected with the creation or distribution of wealth, should read this book.
An Oration Delivered Before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, August 24, 1848. By Horace Bushnell. Cambridge: George Nichols.
Dr. Bushnell has within a year or two taken a prominent position among New England divines, and promises to rank high among the influencing minds of the day. To deep and scholarly culture, he unites a strong, independent, and singularly keen and ingenious intellect, and a beautiful and bountiful spirit of cheerfulness and charity. The present oration is a fine poem, expressing rather a mood of mind than a system of philosophy, but grouping together with fine art many facts of consciousness, and applying them to the phenomena of life. Every thing, in fact, is surveyed in the light of two ideas, Work and Play, and though the application is sometimes more fanciful than reasonable, the result is a series of beautiful representations, original in conception and finely felicitous in expression. There is room for considerable difference of opinion in the oration, but none will be inclined to doubt the author's ability or keenness. As a specimen of the style we extract a passage relating to war, which he calls an imposing and plausible counterfeit of play, or inspiration.
"Since," he says, "we cannot stay content in the dull uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he is to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war—wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous and brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of the steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot—under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans—what of these?—nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes."
Three Sisters and Three Fortunes; or Rose, Blanche and Violet. By G. H. Lewes. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Lewes is an author very little known in this country. This is the first work of his which has been reprinted. But in England he has considerable reputation among the higher class of readers and men of taste for his brilliant powers of mind and extensive acquirements. His Biographical History of Philosophy we have never seen, but we have observed allusions to it in other publications, exalting it to a very high rank among thoughtful books. For some time, if we are not mistaken, he was the chief literary critic of the Westminster Review, and many of his articles were marked by strong and deep thinking, a little injured by vagaries of expression. In a novel by such a writer we should naturally expect more than a mere love story, more than a narrative of incidents and representation of passions; and he has not disappointed expectation. Indeed one can easily see that the book is based on a philosophical system, and that more is meant than directly meets the eye. The characters and events all illustrate some problems in metaphysics and ethics, and refer more to the understanding than the imagination. The story does not lack interest, nor the personages character, but both are o'erinformed with meditation. Fine as the novel undoubtedly is, the author has not given it the requisite artistical finish to produce an harmonious impression. Speculation on matters connected with literature, art and politics, essays on the passions and the will, appear in their naked character amid romantic incidents and imaginative representation. The author, in short, ought to have made his book altogether didactic or altogether dramatic, to fulfill the requisitions of either department. Had he fused all his abstract thought and practical speculation in the alembic of the imagination, and accordingly represented all in the concrete form of character and events, the result would have been a much better novel.
Euthanasy; or Happy Talk Toward the End of Life. By William Mountford, Author of Martyria, &c., &c. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo.
The author of this volume is one of the most profoundly meditative writers living. We are not aware that his productions have had an extended circulation out of New England, where they are very popular, and if they have not, we hardly know of a better service we could do our readers than to advise them to seek his companionship. Martyria and the present work are two books which no one can read without being benefitted—without having a deeper sense of the "dread soul within him," and without feeling a warmer love of his race. "Euthanasy" is one of those volumes which win their way into the heart with a soft unconscious persuasiveness, and abide there when they have once found an entrance. The author's spirit is rich, sweet, thoughtful, tender—seeking the beautiful and the good by a spontaneous instinct, and discerning them often, with the subtilty of purity in things which seem valueless to the common eye—and while it soars into the highest regions of spiritual contemplation, can still survey practical life with a wisdom and sagacity which almost seem incompatible with its loftiness. The truth is that the author possesses one of the rarest things ever seen in this world—a truly spiritual mind, in which there is established no divorce between the practical and the spiritual, the common and the ideal. Spirituality with him is a life—no hearsay or imagination, but an experience. He consequently spiritualizes the human and humanizes the spiritual.
The work, in addition to its own stores of original thought, has many a golden sentence and rhyme from the meditative poets of Germany and England, which lend it increased richness and beauty.
Ellen Middleton; a Tale. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton, Author of Grantly Manor. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
Grantly Manor is a novel of high and peculiar excellence, and has had a great run. Its readers threw themselves upon the present work as soon as it was published, their expectations whetted by the memory of the last. The result has been comparative disappointment. The truth is Ellen Middleton preceded Grantly Manor, and is altogether a less pleasing production. Considered, however, as the first work of the author, it is rich in promise and by no means insignificant in performance. The characters are strongly drawn and well discriminated, and the passions with which it deals are of that potent kind which test a novelist's strength and daring. The difficulty with the book is not its lack of power, but its lack of homely interest. The characters and incidents are too much made up in the author's mind—enclosed, as it were, in a peculiar domain, and colored by one peculiar experience of life—to give that satisfaction which results from a delineation of actual life, or from vivid and beautiful ideal creations. There is too much agony, and anguish, and hyperbolical emotion, and splitting of the heart, and such like rioting in spiritual misery and ruin. The elegance, eloquence and sweetness of the author's style, and the high moral and religious character of her mind, appear, however, in Ellen Middleton as in Grantly Manor, and with the advantage of as good a story would produce as agreeable an impression.
History of Mary, Queen of Scotts. By Jacob Abbott. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo.
This is one of a series of popular histories which Mr. Abbott is preparing for his countrymen. The tone and object will considerably differ from the common historical works in circulation. Mr. Abbott considers that the situation and principles of American readers require views of historical events different from those they would obtain from foreigners. The present work is devoted to one of the most romantic and thrilling stories in historical literature—the Life of Mary, Queen of Scotts. It is elegantly and truthfully written, and the mechanical execution of the volume is exceedingly beautiful.
Macaulay's History of England.
The Harpers have received from the author, in sheets, the first and second volumes of "The History of England, from the Accession of James II., by T. B. Macaulay." For these they pay one hundred guineas a volume. The work itself will doubtless create as great a stir as any book published within the last twenty years. Every body is curious especially to discover the style which Macaulay has adopted—that of his Essays being too brisk, brilliant and epigrammatic for an historian. It will probably be something like that of the Preface to the "Lays of Ancient Rome," or that of his latest article on Lord Chatham.