“Pocahontas” is a far finer poem than a late one on the same subject by Mr. Seba Smith. Mrs. Sigourney, however, has the wrong accentuation of Powhatan. In the second stanza of the poem, too, “harassed” is in false quantity. We speak of these trifles merely en passant.
Hereafter we may speak in full.
The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford: Including Numerous Letters now first published from the Original Manuscripts. In Four Volumes. Lea and Blanchard: Philadelphia.
Horace Walpole has been well termed “the prince of epistolary writers,” and his Letters, which in this edition are given chronologically, form a very complete and certainly a very piquant commentary on the events of his age, as well as a record, in great part, of the most important historical transactions from 1735 to 1797.
Prefixed to the collection are the author’s “Reminiscences of the Courts of George the First and Second”—Reminiscences which have been styled “the very perfection of anecdote writing.” There is, also, the “Life,” by Lord Dover. The volumes are magnificent octavos of nearly 600 pages each, beautifully printed on excellent paper, and handsomely bound. It is really superfluous to recommend these books. Every man who pretends to a library will purchase them of course.
The Early English Church. By Edward Churton, M. D., Rector of Crayke, Durham. With a Preface by the Rt. Rev. L. Silliman Ives, M. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of N. Carolina. From the second London edition. D. Appleton and Co.: New York.
The title of this volume does not fully explain its character. The aim of the writer, to use his own words, has been “by searching the earliest records of English history, to lay before the English reader a faithful picture of the life and manners of his Christian forefathers.” This design, as far as we have been able to judge in a very cursory examination, is well executed.