The Life of Franklin Pierce. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
General Pierce was Hawthorne’s companion at college, and the present biography is in some respects a labor of love, though it has not the usual felicity of such labor in having in it the best qualities of the author’s genius. It is well written, in the ordinary meaning of the word, but it has hardly a single peculiarity of thought or style to remind one of the author of “The Scarlet Letter,” and “The Blithedale Romance.”
The School for Fathers. An Old English Story. By T. Gwynne. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
The object of this novel is to present a vivid representation of English town and country life as it existed a century ago. It is generally well-written, but the story indicates an unpracticed hand in romance, and the transition from Addisonian description to Ainsworthian horrors, is abrupt and unnatural. The scene where the choleric lover blows out the brains of the beautiful lady, as she is going to church to be married to his rival, is a little too exciting even for our hardened critical nerves.
Arctic Journal; or Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions. By Lieut. S. Osborn. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.
This is the work of a thorough English sailor, bluff, honest, with a quick eye for what he sees, and a racy dogmatism in recording his own impressions. The descriptions are almost daguerreotypes of objects, and throughout the whole volume a delightful spirit of hope and health breathes. It is invigorating as well as interesting.
Atlantic and Transatlantic: Sketches Afloat and Ashore. By Captain Mackinnon, R. N. Author of Steam Warfare in the Parana. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.