Eleven Weeks in Europe, by James Freeman Clarke. (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.) We never should be surfeited with books of travels, if they all evinced the frankness, intelligence, and cultivated taste which characterize this readable volume. Mr. Clarke shows how much can be done in a short time on a European tour. His book is valuable as a guide to the selection of objects, no less than for its excellent descriptions and criticisms. Without claiming any great degree of novelty, it has an original air from the freedom with which the author uses his own eyes and forms his own judgments. He speaks altogether from personal impressions, and does not aim to echo the opinions of others, however wise or well-informed. His volume is, accordingly, a rarity in these days, when every body travels, and all copy.
Messrs. Lippincott, Grambo, and Co., of Philadelphia, are now publishing a library edition of the Waverley Novels, to be complete in 12 monthly volumes, neatly bound in cloth, with illustrations, at one dollar per volume. They also issue the work in semi-monthly parts, at fifty cents, each part embracing a complete novel. The above will take the place of the edition recently proposed by Harper and Brothers.
The third volume of Douglas Jerrold's writings contains some of his most popular and remarkable pieces. The "Curtain Lectures, as suffered by the late Job Caudle," and "The Story of a Feather" appeared originally in Punch—and they have since been repeatedly reprinted, the former in several editions. The thousands of readers who have profited by the lectures of Mrs. Caudle may be glad to learn Mr. Jerrold's characteristic account of the manner in which that household oracle first addressed herself to his own mind. "It was a thick, black wintry afternoon, when the writer stopt in the front of the play-ground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed with boys full of the Saturday's holiday. The earth seemed roofed with the oldest lead; and the wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife, from the Minories. But those happy boys ran and jumped, and hopped, and shouted, and—unconscious men in miniature!—in their own world of frolic, had no thought of the full-length men they would some day become; drawn out into grave citizenship; formal, respectable, responsible. To them the sky was of any or all colors; and for that keen east-wind—if it was called the east-wind—cutting the shoulder-blades of old, old men of forty—they in their immortality of boyhood had the redder faces, and the nimbler blood for it. And the writer, looking dreamily into that play-ground, still mused on the robust jollity of those little fellows, to whom the tax-gatherer was as yet a rarer animal than baby hippopotamus. Heroic boyhood, so ignorant of the future in the knowing enjoyment of the present! And the writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words—Curtain Lectures. One moment there was no living object save those racing, shouting boys; and the next, as though a white dove had alighted on the pen-hand of the writer, there was—Mrs. Caudle. Ladies of the jury, are there not, then, some subjects of letters that mysteriously assert an effect without any discoverable cause? Otherwise, wherefore should the thought of Curtain Lectures grow from a school-ground?—wherefore, among a crowd of holiday schoolboys should appear Mrs. Caudle? For the Lectures themselves, it is feared they must be given up as a farcical desecration of a solemn time-honored privilege; it may be exercised once in a life-time—and that once having the effect of a hundred repetitions; as Job lectured his wife. And Job's wife, a certain Mohammedan writer delivers, having committed a fault in her love to her husband, he swore that on his recovery he would deal her a hundred stripes. Job got well, and his heart was touched and taught by the tenderness to keep his vow, and still to chastise his helpmate; for he smote her once with a palm-branch having a hundred leaves." To the "Curtain Lectures" and the "Story of a Feather" Mr. Jerrold has added a very beautiful and characteristic "tale of faëry," entitled, "The Sick Giant and the Doctor Dwarf."
A new edition of Professor Anthon's Anabasis of Xenophon, with English notes, is published in London, under the revision of Dr. John Doran. "Dr. Anthon," says the Athenæum, "has edited, and elucidated by notes, several of the ancient classics, and whatever he has undertaken he has performed in a scholarly style. At the same time his books are entirely free from pedantry, and the notes and comments are so plain and useful, that they are as popular with boys as they are convenient for teachers."
The same Journal has rather a left-handed compliment to American literature in general, to which, however, it is half inclined to make our popular Ik. Marvel an exception.
"There is no very startling vitality in any other of Mr. Marvel's 'daydreams.' Still, at the present period, when the writers of American belles-lettres, biography and criticism, show such a tendency to mould themselves into those affected forms by which vagueness of thought and short-sightedness of view are disguised, and to use a jargon which is neither English nor German—a writer unpretending in his manner and simple in his matter is not to be dismissed without a kind word; and therefore we have advisedly loitered for a page or two with Ik. Marvel."