The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
This is a collection of Mr. Hawthorne’s Sketches and Stories which have not been included in any previous collection, and comprise his earliest and latest contributions to periodical literature. It can hardly add to his great reputation, though it fully sustains it. “The Snow-Image,” with which the volume commences, is one of those delicate creations which no imagination less etherial and less shaping than Hawthorne’s could body forth. “Main Street,” a sketch but little known, is an exquisite series of historical pictures, which bring the persons and events in the history of Salem, vividly home to the eye and the fancy. “Ethan Brand,” one of the most powerful of Hawthorne’s works, is a representation of a man, tormented with a desire to discover the unpardonable sin, and ending with finding it in his own breast. “The Great Stone Face,” a system of philosophy given in a series of characterizations, contains, among other forcible delineations, a full length of Daniel Webster. The volume contains a dozen other tales, some of them sunny in sentiment and subtle in humor, with touches as fine and keen as Addison’s or Steele’s: and others dark and fearful, as though the shadow of a thunder-cloud fell on the author’s page as he wrote. All are enveloped in the atmosphere, cheerful or sombre, of the mood of mind whence they proceeded, and all convey that unity of impression which indicates a firm hold on one strong conception. As stories, they arrest, fasten, fascinate attention; but, to the thoughtful reader they are not merely tales, but contributions to the philosophy of the human mind.
Memories of the Great Metropolis: or London from the Tower to the Crystal Palace. By F. Sanders. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.
This elegant volume, sumptuous in its binding and finely printed and illustrated, meets a want both in the traveled and the untraveled public. The work of a gentleman who knows every nook and corner of the empire city by personal observation, and who, by his large acquaintance with English authors and English literary history, is enabled to point out all the localities consecrated by genius and heroism; it is full of interesting and attractive matter to all readers. As a guide to London, it will be found a genial as well as a knowing companion to the tourist. We have been especially pleased with those portions which describe the shops of the booksellers and the residences of the authors. The volume is exceedingly well written, and though crammed with facts, betrays neither the dryness nor confusion too often characteristic of similar books. The author’s “memories” are never dull, but sparkle with animation and point.
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.
This biography is the work of three “eminent hands”—William H. Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, each writing that portion of Margaret’s life most familiar to himself. The result is one of the most curious, attractive and stimulating books of the season. The impression it conveys of the subject of the memoirs, is of a woman “large in heart and brain,” of great vigor and depth of nature, accomplished in many literatures, with an understanding capacious and masculine, and with a sensibility somewhat irregular and chaotic, in which powerful passions, delicate emotions and vague aspirations, seem never to have been harmonized into unity. The character, however, in spite of many limitations and some petty traits, was generally large and noble, and its essential excellence is not only demonstrated by the private journals and correspondence contained in these volumes, but by the fact that she merited the esteem and admiration of three such men as her biographers. Her defects are promptly admitted by all three, but in the opinion of all three they were superficial in comparison with the real graces and powers of her mind. In all those letters and journals in which her soul finds adequate expression, in which her most secret thoughts and most genuine aspirations are revealed, she is invariably true and noble; egotism, satire and pique have in them no place.
Mr. Emerson’s portion of these memoirs is done with his usual felicity of phrase and sharpness of statement, and is as attractive as any of his essays. He writes in a kindly spirit, and is evidently a genuine admirer of his subject, but his friendship is unaccompanied with exaggeration, and is combined with his usual austere but graceful honesty in stating his whole opinion. Thus, he gives the first impression which Miss Fuller made on him in these unflattering words: “Her extreme plainness—a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids—the nasal tone of her voice—all repelled; and I said to myself we shall never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterward her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the women did not like one who despised them.” He also gives some amusing instances of her self-esteem. “Margaret at first astonished and repelled us by a complacency that seemed the most assured since the days of Scaliger. . . . She occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, ‘He appreciates ME.’ ”