Rural Letters and other Records of Thought at Leisure, written in the intervals of more hurried Literary Labor. By N. Parker Willis. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.
The publication of this delightful volume was well-timed, appearing as it did with the new grass and the first flowers; and we doubt not it will be the companion of many a city tourist during the summer months. It is, perhaps, the most fascinating of Mr. Willis’s prose works, evincing more than his usual graceful facility of expression and fluency of thought, and variegated with the cosiest fancies and most genial wit. The author shakes hands with nature, and though the gleam of his jeweled fingers sometimes suggests that he is merely a visiter to her dominions, his beautiful audacity of manner forces the old lady to tell him some of her finest secrets—secrets which she has not always confided to her unconventional adorers. We hardly know whether the book is more calculated to delight the citizen or the countryman, but certainly there is a sweet fusion of nature and convention in it which must win the hearts of both. The volume contains “Letters from Under a Bridge,” “Open-Air Musings in the City,” “Invalid Rambles in Germany,” “Letters from Watering Places,” and “A Plain Man’s Love.” It is dedicated to Imogene, the author’s daughter, in five of the best pages that Mr. Willis ever wrote. The book is elegantly printed, and cannot but reach that wide circulation which it so richly merits.
Philosophy of Religion. By J. Morell, A. M. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
The subject of this valuable volume is one to task the energies of the strongest intellect, and Mr. Morell seems to have exerted his to its utmost capacity in its production. Though it may not be in all cases sound and practical it evinces a wide knowledge of philosophical systems, is eminently suggestive, and thoroughly imbued with the spirit both of philosophy and religion. Mr. Morell is a metaphysician of the Scotch school, a follower of Reid and Hamilton, and from the latter especially he has drawn a good deal of his inspiration. Indeed, Sir William Hamilton’s dissertations and notes annexed to the late edition of Reid, are destined to have a wide if not a deep influence on contemporary thought. The present volume indicates how important are his distinctions of presentative and representative knowledge, for from Hamilton’s philosophy of perception a good portion of the book is drawn. Mr. Morell is well adapted to popularize the principles of more scientific and original thinkers than himself, and we hardly know of two works better calculated to initiate the reading public into the nature of the problems which vex metaphysics and metaphysical theology than his history of Philosophy and his present volume on the Philosophy of Religion.
Les Confidences. Confidential Disclosures. By Alphonse de Lamartine. Translated from the French, by Eugene Plunket.
This curious volume is the commencement of an autobiography, in which Lamartine confides to the public the thoughts and events of his life. Like all the other productions of the accomplished author it is written in a charming style, and with an abundance of captivating sentiment, but it gives no evidence of that robustness and solidity of nature we are accustomed to expect in a great man after the Saxon type. The sentimental dogmatist and egotist is predominant throughout, and with all its merit it seems to us one of those books which convey intellectual disease into the public mind, and enfeeble while they please. It would not, perhaps, be just to test its excellence by its agreement with English or American codes of taste, or object to some of its disclosures as puerile and unmanly, because so stigmatized by the canons of a particular nation, but we think on general principles of human nature it cannot stand a sharp examination. There is no evidence of any intrinsic greatness and grandeur of mind or heart in the book, nothing which justifies the author in making his weaknesses and vices, his virtues and fine notions, the subject of a particular work, and cramming the public mind with himself. There is really no addition made to our knowledge of ethics or metaphysics, to society or psychology, by the exhibition here made of the interior nature of Alphonse de Lamartine. He “wears his heart upon his sleeve” to no other purpose than to gratify a ravenous vanity or to fill an empty purse—two of the poorest objects a man can have in view in exhibiting himself.