This is the best edition of Walton’s Angler ever published in England or America. Of the book itself it is almost needless to speak, for it is read wherever the English language is spoken. It is a quaint, humane, practical, poetical, and most delicious volume. For summer reading, under the trees, or by the rocks of the sea-shore, it is almost unmatched. The reader for the time is equal to Walton himself, in “possessing his soul in much quietness.” To the angler the book is both a classic and a companion. The person who reads it for the first time is to be envied. The American editor has performed his task of illustration and comment with the spirit both of an antiquary and a lover, and has really added to the value of the original. To all men and women, vexed with cares and annoyances of any kind, we commend this sunny volume. They will feel it as a minister of peace and quiet thoughts.
Fresh Gleanings: or a New Sheaf from the Old Fields of Continental Europe. By Ik. Marvel. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.
The title of this work is not more quaint that its mechanical execution. As it is like no other book of travels, so it is printed like no other. It seems as if the author felt that his subject had been so exhausted, that the public would not believe in the epithet “fresh,” unless the printing was “fresh” also. We can hardly praise the book more than by saying that the title is true. Almost every page is alive with a fresh, keen, observing, thoughtful, tolerant, fanciful, and sensible mind. The author’s manner of writing is characteristic, and, except that it sometimes reminds us of Sterne, is as new as his matter. Even the occasional affectation in his style appears like something which has grown into his mind, not plastered upon it. Among the many merits of his descriptions and narrations, we have been especially struck with his originality in blending his own emotions with what he describes. He represents objects not only as pictures, but he gives the associations, and the mysterious trains of thought they awaken. There is a certain strangeness, so to speak, in his descriptions, which, without marring the distinctness of objects, adds to them a charm derived from a curious fancy, and a thoughtful intellect.
We suppose that most of our readers are aware that Ik. Marvel is but another name for Donald G. Mitchell.
Notes on the Parables of Our Lord. By Richard Cherevix French, A. M. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 8vo.
A work like this, learned enough for the scholar, and plain enough for the worshiper, has long been wanted. The author has given the subject the most profound study, and examined almost every thing bearing upon it, either directly or incidentally; and has produced a work in which the results of patient thought and investigation are presented in a style of great sweetness and clearness. The diction, considered in respect to its tone rather than its form, reminds us of Newman, one of those masters of composition who are too apt to be overlooked by the mere man of letters, from the exclusive devotion of their powers to theology.
The Crown of Thorns. A Token for the Sorrowing. By Edwin H. Chapin. Boston: A Tompkins. 1 vol. 24mo.