The Women of Early Christianity. A Series of Portraits, with appropriate Descriptions, by several American Clergymen. Edited by Rev. J. A. Spencer, M. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 8vo.
This magnificent volume, with its superb illustrations, letter-press and binding, seems to have been published with a determination to rival those English houses who supply the American market with splendid gift-books. It contains seventeen ideal portraits, engraved from original designs for this work, and conveying all the varieties of expression which religious emotion communicates to the human countenance, from the humblest penitence to loftiest rapture. The notices are by the editor, assisted by Dr. Sprague, Dr. Kip, Dr. Ingen, Dr. Parks, the Rev. Mr. Osgood, and a few other eminent clergymen. The volume will be found especially interesting to those who delight in whatever increases their knowledge of the manners and the character, the sufferings and the heroic resolution of the early Christians. The lives of these women is a representation of Christianity as embodied in feminine character; and the study is curious in its metaphysical as well as its theological aspect. Among the best of the communicated articles, is that of St. Agnes, by Mr. Osgood. The conclusion we quote for the pointedness of its application. “To us,” says Mr. Osgood, “this Roman girl stands as a sacred ideal of the Christian maiden. Her name we may not invoke in prayer. Her purity and heroism we may admire and commend to the honor of the maidens of our time, who are tempted by powers more insidious than the arts and threats of Sempronius. The world has not changed its heart so much as its creed and costume. Its corrupt fashions would tyrannize over our daughters with the pride of the Cæsars, and a meretricious literature lurks in our journals and romances more dangerous to maidenly purity than the den of shame which assailed only to illustrate the virtue of Agnes. True to her soul and to her Saviour, the Christian maiden wins to her brow a radiance which, instead of being dimmed by marriage, is rather brightened by the affections of the wife and the sacrifices of the mother, into the aureola of the saint.”
Greenwood Leaves. A Collection of Sketches and Letters. By Grace Greenwood. Second Series. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo.
This series of sketches is superior to the first, and indicates plainly, not only the growth of the author’s mind, but a firmer and more confident grasp and control of her various resources of intellect, sentiment and acquisition. It is the production of the same individuality which gave zest to her first volume, but an individuality of larger moral and mental stature. The full, easy, almost majestic flow of emotion and sentiment, which gave vividness to the conceptions and vigorous movement to the style of her former sketches, is visible here in a brighter and more powerful form; and, it may be added, that the faults proceeding from the intensity of her mind, and her custom of surveying things which properly claim the decision of judgment through an atmosphere of feeling, are not altogether absent from her present work. She exaggerates both in her praise and blame; her eulogy being too generous, her condemnation sometimes too sharp and indiscriminating; and many of her criticisms are, therefore, but an ingenious and splendid exhibition of likes and dislikes, rather than a record of intellectual judgments. She has not yet obtained the faculty of viewing things as they are in themselves, independent of the feelings they excite in her own soul. This fault is a source of raciness, and doubtless makes her books all the more stimulating to a majority of renders; but it would seem that a mind which gives such unmistakable hints of sharp insight, penetrating wit, and clear, intuitive reason as Grace Greenwood’s, should keep the enthusiasm of her nature a little more under control; and this could be done, we opine, without breaking up into waves and ripples that superb sweep of her prose style, which is her great charm as a writer. We may add that the Letters in this volume, especially those from Washington, have often a delightful combination of observation, wit and fancy, and in their rambling references to individuals, almost raise gossip to the dignity of a fine art.
Moby-Dick; or The Whale. By Herman Melville. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
This volume sparkles with the raciest qualities of the author’s voluble and brilliant mind, and whatever may be its reception among old salts, it will be sure of success with the reading public generally. It has passages of description and narration equal to the best that Melville has written, and its rhetoric revels and riots in scenes of nautical adventure with more than usual glee and gusto. The style is dashing, headlong, strewn with queer and quaint ingenuities moistened with humor, and is a capital specimen of deliberate and felicitous recklessness, in which a seeming helter-skelter movement is guided by real judgment. The whole work beams with the analogies of a bright and teeming fancy—a faculty that Melville possesses in such degree that it sometimes betrays his rhetoric into fantastic excesses, and gives a sort of unreality to his most vivid descriptions. The joyous vigor and elasticity of his style, however, compensate for all faults, and even his tasteless passages bear the impress of conscious and unwearied power. His late books are not only original in the usual sense, but evince originality of nature, and convey the impression of a new individuality, somewhat composite, it is true, but still giving to the jaded reader of every-day publications, that pleasant shock of surprise which comes from a mental contact with a character at once novel and vigorous.