And still the cautious trot the cautious mind betrays.
Wise is thy head! how stout soe'er his back,
Thy weight has oft proved fatal to thy hack!”
The generous and graceful turn given to this in the foot-note, is such as one might expect from Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. In another series we have the second part of Ernest Maltravers, or, as the other title bears, Alice, or The Mysteries. In this work of allegorical fiction, with the author's usual power and felicity of narrative, there is mingled a philosophical purpose; and in a new preface Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton ascribes to it, above all his other works, “such merit as may be thought to belong to harmony between a premeditated conception, and the various incidents and agencies employed in the development of plot.” “Ernest Maltravers,” the type of Genius or intellectual ambition, is after long and erring alienation happily united to “Alice,” the type of Nature, nature now elevated and idealized.
A new novel, by the gifted author of “Olive,” and the “Ogilvies,” entitled “The Head of the Family,” is spoken of in terms of warm admiration by the London press. The Weekly News remarks, “The charm of idyllic simplicity will be found in every page of the book, imparting an interest to it which rises very far above the ordinary feeling evoked by novel reading. So much truthfulness, so much force, combined with so much delicacy of characterization, we have rarely met with; and on these grounds alone, irrespective of literary merit, we are inclined to credit the work with a lasting popularity.”
The same journal has a highly favorable notice of Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, from which we take the following passage: “In reviewing the recent volumes of Lord Mahon's History that treat of the American war, we expressed an opinion that the subject was one to which no American writer had done justice. The work now before us appears (so far as we may judge from its first moiety), to be the best contribution that any citizen of the United States has yet made to a correct knowledge of the circumstances of their war of independence. It is not a regular history; and the blank in transatlantic literature, to which we have referred, remains yet to be supplied. But Mr. Lossing has given us a volume full of valuable information respecting the great scenes and the leading men of the war. And the profuseness with which he has illustrated his narrative with military plans, with portraits of statesmen and commanders, and with sketches of celebrated localities, gives great interest and value to these pages.”
With all its stubborn John Bullism, the London Athenæum is compelled to pay a flattering tribute to the literary merits of our distinguished countryman, Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Among the sterling pleasures which, though few, make rich amends for the many grievances and misconstructions that await honest critics, there is none so great as the discovery and support of distant and unknown genius. Such pleasure the Athenæum may fairly claim in the case of Mr. Hawthorne. Like all men so richly and specially gifted, he has at last found his public—he is at last looked to, and listened for: but it is fifteen years since we began to follow him in the American periodicals, and to give him credit for the power and the originality which have since borne such ripe fruit in 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'The House of the Seven Gables.' Little less agreeable is it to see that acceptance, after long years of waiting, seems not to have soured the temper of the writer—not to have encouraged him into conceit—not to have discouraged him into slovenliness. Like a real artist Mr. Hawthorne gives out no slightly planned nor carelessly finished literary handiwork.”