Waverley Novels. Library Edition. Vol. 1. Waverley; or ’Tis Sixty Years Since. Boston: B. B. Mussey & Co. 12mo.
This is a new issue of Parker’s celebrated edition of the Waverley Novels, containing the author’s final additions, corrections and notes. It is printed in large type, is very cheap, and should meet with success. This, with Lippincott, Grambo & Co.’s edition, will doubtless induce a re-perusal of the novels of Scott. Nothing that has since been written has surpassed or even equaled them in the distinguishing features of romantic writing. It is Scott’s great and rare distinction that he created a school of novelists admitting the exercise of the most various genius, and that among the myriad writers who have felt his inspiration none has received or merited his fame. In England a hundred and twenty-five thousand copies of his novels have been sold, and the demand still continues. Scott should be read every five years. In the fourth perusal we have found his novels more interesting than the new romances of the day.
Graces and Powers of the Christian Life. By A. D. Mayo. Boston: Abel Tompkins. 1 vol. 12mo.
The present volume contains eleven sermons on topics suggested by the title, and they are all worthy of being read beyond that peculiar circle of readers, known technically as the “religious public.” The writer is evidently a man of a discerning and disciplined mind, writing from deep fountains of personal experience, and treating the gravest and deepest realities of life with the assured air of one whose soul has been in contact with the great spiritual facts he announces. Hence comes both the elevation and the practical soundness of his statements of duty and his exhortations to holiness. His style is pliable to his thoughts and emotions, stating plain things plainly, and rising as his subject rises into unforced dignity and eloquence. There is nothing of the rhetorician either in the selection of his matter, or his mode of expressing it, but an unmistakable sincerity and truthfulness distinguish every statement, argument and appeal. As a thinker he excels in spiritual discernment, though he is not deficient in that logical method by which a principle, clearly conceived in itself, is rigidly followed through all its applications to men and to affairs. His volume meets practical needs in many hearts, and only requires to have its character known to be extensively read. He belongs to that class of clergymen who really commune with spiritual and religious ideas, and therefore, though a writer of sermons, he never sermonizes.
Roughing it in the Bush; or Life in Canada. By Susanna Moodie. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 2 parts.
Mrs. Moodie is the sister of Agnes Strickland, and while fully her equal in talent, excels both her and most of womankind in enterprise, fortitude and heroism. Her present work, detailing the dangers and discomforts of a life in the far-west of Canada, is full of fine descriptions of nature, evinces throughout a healthy and vigorous spirit, and contains many a scene of genuine humor. Her sketches of character, Yankee, French and English, are especially good.