This elegant volume contains thirty-two essays on a wide variety of subjects connected with literature and life. They are the production of a gentleman who has made literature a study, and who always gives in his essays the results of his own investigations and reflections. The style is very condensed; the fault of the diction, perhaps, arises from the too great desire of the author to cram the largest amount of thought and observation into the smallest possible space. This unusual peculiarity of style is the ideal of style when it is combined with mellowness and vitality; but the sentences of Mr. Jones are often dry and brittle, as well as condensed. Bating this defect, the volume is deserving of great praise. In short essays it takes comprehensive views of wide domains of letters, and is a good guide to the student of elegant literature. The literary information which it contains is very large. We will venture to say that no man in the country can read it without learning something which he did not know before.
Amy Herbert: a Tale. By Miss Sewell. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
This work has essentially the same characteristics as the novel of “Gertrude,” by the same authoress. Miss Sewell is the daughter, we believe, of an English Episcopal clergyman of the Oxford school. Her tales inculcate the piety and morality of practical life; deal with ordinary cares and temptations, expose the moral dangers which beset every relation of existence, and evince a clear insight into the heart’s workings, under the pressure of every day enticements. The thoughtful cheerfulness of her religious faith diffuses through her stories a certain beautiful repose which sometimes almost suggests genius. Her books are of that kind which are calculated to benefit even more than to please.
Lucretia, or the Children of the Night. By Sir Bulwer Lytton. New York: Harper & Brothers.
In this strange mass of “crimson crimes,” the author of “Pelham” has fairly rivaled the French school of novelists. It displays more morbid strength of mind than any thing which Bulwer has previously written. Though exceedingly interesting, and evincing much power in the analysis of the darker passions, it leaves a disagreeable impression. The tone of the sentiment is not English. The novel, indeed, exhibits the characteristic qualities of the author in a form exaggerated almost to caricature. It reads like a melo-drama. We may refer to it more at large in our next number.
The Use of the Body in Relation to the Mind. By George Moore, M. D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 Vol. 12mo.
One of the most important subjects which can engage human attention is in this work, so treated, that its great leading facts and principles can be understood by the common reader. The author has evidently given to each topic he discusses the most profound attention, and has produced a work which, if diligently studied by the mass of people, is calculated to remove a vast sum of that misery which springs from ignorance.