With the lingering, mysterious music of this line sounding in our ears, it would be an impertinence to continue these loose remarks on “The Prelude” any further; and we close by commending the poem to the thoughtful attention of thinking readers.
Christian Thought on Life: In a Series of Discourses. By Henry Giles, Author of Lectures and Essays. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
The author of this beautiful volume is a born orator, whose written style instinctively takes the form of eloquence, and whose strong and deep emotions are at once the inspirers and guides of his pen. He has given us here a dozen discourses, full of living thoughts and winged words, and with not a page which is open to the charge of dullness or triteness. When his theme compels him to introduce common thoughts he avoids commonplaces, and we cannot recognize the old acquaintance of our brain in the fresh and sparkling expression in which it here appears. Mr. Giles, indeed, is so thoroughly a thinker, and his mind is so pervaded by his sentiments, that where he lacks novelty he never lacks originality, and always gives indications of having conceived every thought he expresses. Nobody can read the present volume without being kindled by the vivid vitality with which it presents old truths, and the superb boldness with which it announces new ones. Among the many eloquent and impassioned discourses in the volume, that entitled “The Guilt of Contempt” is perhaps the sharpest in mental analysis, and closest and most condensed in style. It will rank with the best sermons ever delivered from an American pulpit. Another excellent and striking discourse is on the subject of spiritual incongruities as illustrated in the life of David. The five discourses on the Worth, the Personality, the Continuity, the Struggle, the Discipline, of Life, are remarkable for their clear statement of Christian principles, and the knowledge they evince of the inward workings of thought and emotions. Prayer and Passion is a sermon which securely threads all the labyrinths of selfishness, and exposes its most cunning movements and disguises.
We will give a few sentences illustrative of Mr. Giles’ mode of treating religious subjects, and the peculiar union of thought and emotion in his common style of expression. Speaking of the Psalms of David, he says—“They alone contain a poetry that meets the spiritual nature in all its moods and in all its wants, which strengthens virtue with glorious exhortations, gives angelic eloquence to prayer, and almost rises to the seraph’s joy in praise. . . For assemblies or for solitude, for all that gladdens and all that grieves, for our heaviness and despair, for our remorse and our redemption, we find in these divine harmonies the loud or the low expression. Great has been their power in the world. They resounded amidst the courts of the tabernacle; they floated through the lofty and solemn spaces of the temple. They were sung with glory in the halls of Zion; they were sung with sorrow by the streams of Babel. And when Israel had passed away, the harp of David was still awakened in the church of Christ. In all the eras and ages of that church, from the hymn which first it whispered in an upper chamber, until its anthems filled the earth, the inspiration of the royal prophet has enraptured its devotions and ennobled its ritual. And thus it has been, not alone in the august cathedral or the rustic chapel. Chorused by the winds of heaven, they have swelled through God’s own temple of the sky and stars; they have rolled over the broad desert of Asia, in the matins and vespers of ten thousand hermits. They have rung through the deep valleys of the Alps, in the sobbing voices of the forlorn Waldenses; through the steeps and caves of Scottish highlands, in the rude chantings of the Scottish Covenanters; through the woods and wilds of primitive America, in the heroic hallelujahs of the early pilgrims.”
Specimens of Newspaper Literature. With Personal Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences. By Joseph T. Buckingham. Boston: Little & Brown. 2 vols. 12mo.
The author of these volumes has been long extensively known as one of the leading editors of the country; and his age and experience peculiarly qualify him to do justice to the subject he here undertakes to treat. His own recollections must extend back some sixty years; and during that period he has been constantly connected with newspapers, either as printer’s apprentice, journeyman, or editor. He knew intimately most of the editors and writers for the press, who took prominent parts in the political controversies at the formation of the government, and during the first twenty years of its administration, and he is thoroughly acquainted with all the New England newspapers which appeared before the Revolution and during its progress. The work, therefore, is a reflection of the spirit of old times, giving their very “form and pressure,” and exhibiting, sometimes in a ludicrous light, old political passions in all their original frenzy of thought and form of expression. The specimens given of newspaper literature, in verse and prose, are all interesting either for their folly or wisdom, and some of them are valuable as curiosities of rhetoric and logic. Not only is the work valuable to the antiquary, the historian, and the members of “the craft,” but it contains matter sufficiently piquant to stimulate and preserve the attention of the general reader.
The author of these volumes is a marked instance of that inherent strength of character which pursues knowledge under difficulties, and is victorious over all obstacles which obstruct the elevation of the friendless. Without having received even a school education, and passing the period that boys usually devote to Lindley Murray in a printing office, he is one of the most vigorous and polished writers in New England, and in thorough acquaintance with classical English literature has no superiors. Every thing he writes bears the signs, not merely of intellect and taste, but of forcible character; and we believe that a selection from his newspaper articles would make a volume, which for originality of thought, and raciness of expression, would be an addition to our literature.