This is a timely production, written by a man who appears to have sterling honesty as well as sterling sense, and devoted to a subject as interesting as any which can engage the attention of the community. We hope it will attract sufficient attention to insure its extensive circulation, and bring it within the notice of all families. The author grapples with his subject thoroughly, and almost exhausts it. Owing to the various forms, genteel and vulgar, which quackery has assumed in our day, no person, intelligent or ignorant, is safe from some one mode of its operation, as it has contrivances for every age, disposition, grade of mental development, and social station. Dr. Hooker has gone elaborately over the whole matter, and has really given the philosophy as well as the facts of empiricism, both as it exists out of the profession and in it. He does not spare those physicians who follow medicine as a trade, instead of pursuing it as a profession, “and study the science of patient-getting to the neglect of the science of patient curing,” while in showing the processes of the quack in experimenting on the credulity of his victims, he has done an essential service to the health of the community. We can but reiterate the hope that the volume, full as it is of practical wisdom, will be extensively circulated, and do its part toward enlightening the most quack-ridden people on the face of the earth.
History of England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Abdication of James the Second. By David Hume. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 12mo.
This edition of Hume is uniform with the same publishers’ edition of Macaulay. It is neatly printed in good sized type, and is placed at a price sufficiently cheap to bring it within the reach of the humblest reader. It is reprinted from the last and best London edition, and is prefaced by Hume’s delightful autobiography. It is needless to inform our readers that the work is a classic, and ranks with the greatest historical works ever written in this world. But though its fame is wide, we doubt if the generality of the reading public give it their attention. This is really abstinence from pleasure as well as instruction, for Hume is among the most fascinating of narrators. His style is simple, clear, racy, and flowing, beyond that of almost any English historian, and being but a translucent mirror of events and reflections, it attracts no attention to itself, and therefore never tires. The wonder of the book is its happy union of narration and reflections and the skill with which every thing is brought home to the humblest capacity. It belongs to that class of works in which power is not paraded, but unobtrusively insinuated in thoughts carelessly dropped, as it were, in the course of a familiar narration of interesting incidents. “Easy writing,” said Sheridan, “is cursed hard writing.” The easy style of Hume is an illustration. The reader, at the end, feels that he has been keeping company with a great man, gifted with an extraordinary grasp and subtlety of mind, but during the journey he thought he was but chatting with an agreeable and intelligent familiar companion.
Success in Life. The Merchant. By Mrs. L. C. Tuthill. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.
The present volume is the first of a series of six, in which the authoress intends to indicate the rationale of the successful merchant, lawyer, mechanic, artist, physician and farmer, illustrating each department by biographical anecdotes. We have here, as the leader of the series, a volume on The Merchant. The style is gossiping, without much pretension to beauty or correctness, but the matter indicates a shrewd mind and extensive miscellaneous reading. There is one chapter devoted almost wholly to Robert Morris, a man whose amplitude of mind comprehended both statesmanship and commerce, and whom Burke might have adduced in proof of his assertion, that he had known merchants with the large conceptions of statesmen, and statesmen with the little notions of pedlars. Mrs. Tuthill chats very agreeably of Morris, and among other anecdotes of him, gives a laconic letter he wrote to some French officers in the American army, on their insolently demanding an immediate settlement of their arrears of pay. Here it is, and it is a good example of cutting knots which cannot be untied: “Gentlemen,—I have received this morning your application. I make the earliest answer to it. You demand immediate payment, I have no money to pay you with.” We extract this letter as a model to those of our readers who are often puzzled, under similar circumstances, to hit upon the right mode of announcing such uncomfortable demands to perform the impossible.
Sketches of Life and Character. By T. S. Arthur. Illustrated with Sixteen Engravings, and a Portrait of the Author. Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, 48 North Fourth Street, 1849.
Mr. Arthur’s name, as a delineator of American character and manners, and an earnest and sincere advocate of sound, uncompromising morality, is already familiar to the reading public, not only in the United States but in Europe. His object, in every production of his able pen, is well understood to be utility—utility in the highest sense of the word, that which has reference to man’s eternal wellbeing. In his lighter as well as in his graver effusions, the same exalted object is always kept steadily in view. He writes to improve the characters and exalt the aim of his readers. This is the secret of his wide-spread popularity. Men love and respect those who exhibit a steady, consistent, and persevering adherence to principle. In the princely mansions of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log-cabins of the backwoodsmen, the name of Arthur is equally known and cherished as the friend of virtue, and the eloquent advocate of temperance.