Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings, by Daniel B. Woods. (Published by Harper and Brothers.) The peculiar value of this work consists in its being an authentic record of the experience of an intelligent and trustworthy writer. In this respect, we have seen no publication on California that is its equal. Mr. Woods is a man of high character and learned education, who was led by ill health to exchange the duties of professional life for the rude toils of the gold-digger. He engaged in his new business with unflinching energy. Becoming a miner among the miners, he had the most ample opportunities to learn their condition, their prospects, their sufferings, and their rewards. He describes plainly what he saw. He borrows no colors from the fancy. His book is a record of hard facts. It introduces us behind the scenes. Eminently free from exaggeration, it shows the hardships by which the gold of California was procured on the first discovery of the placers. Its tendency is to discourage emigration. He would advise those who are tolerably well off at home to be content. At the same time, the California adventurer, who is tempted by the hope of a golden harvest to leave the blessings of Atlantic civilization, will find a guide and counselor in this volume, which can hardly fail to be of essential service. We recommend all prospective gold-diggers to take it with them across the Isthmus or around the Cape.
D. Appleton and Co. have issued an elegant volume of Oriental travels, entitled The Land of Bondage, by the Rev. J. M. Wainwright. It contains the journal of a tour in Egypt, with a description of its ancient monuments and present condition, illustrated by a variety of well-executed appropriate engravings. The work is intended to present an accurate record of the observations made by the intelligent author, without aiming at the brilliant vivacity which has been so much affected by recent travelers in the East. It is a simple, faithful narrative, and makes no pretensions to being a romance or prose-poem. The scenes visited by Dr. Wainwright, comprising the valley of the Nile from Cairo to Thebes, are full of interest. He describes them minutely, and with excellent taste. Uniting a fresh susceptibility to the romantic impressions of the “morning land,” with a style of polished classic elegance, Dr. Wainwright has produced a standard book of travels, which merits a cordial reception by the public, both for the extent and accuracy of its information, and the beauty and good taste of its execution.
The Evening Book, by Mrs. Kirkland (published by Charles Scribner), is a collection of popular essays on morals and manners, with sketches of Western Life, including many of the most agreeable productions of the favorite authoress. Several of them have a sober, didactic aim, but all are marked with Mrs. Kirkland’s habitual brilliancy and point. Her discussions of various topics of social ethics are admirable. She exhibits the acute tact of a woman in her perceptions of character, while she presents the fruits of tranquil reflection in a tone of masculine vigor. The spirit of these essays is one of mild, contemplative wisdom, gracefully blended with a love of the humorous, and a spice of perfectly good-natured satire.—A number of beautiful illustrations greatly enhances the interest of the volume.
The Tutor’s Ward, (published by Harper and Brothers), is the title of one of the most powerful English novels of the season. It is intended to illustrate the great moral truth that the soul’s repose is not found in human love; that the immortal spirit can live in love alone; but that human love is only the type of that which can never die. The story turns on two female characters—one a brilliant, gifted, fascinating, bewildering creature, whose heart has been wholly steeped in selfishness, but whose artful nature has called forth the most impassioned love—the other, a being of rare and beautiful endowments, with an intense, loving, devoted soul, in whom passion takes the form of a sublime, almost inconceivable disinterestedness, presenting the most striking contrast to her rival and evil genius. The plot is a heart-rending tragedy; the scenes are skillfully shaded off till they present the sullen blackness of midnight; the whole winding up with terrible retributions and despair. While we do not think the developments of this story are true to nature, we can not deny its strange, irresistible fascinations. It paints an ideal of heartless egotism on the one side, and of generous self-sacrifice on the other, which is psychologically impossible; but this ideal is set forth with so much subtlety of invention, such tragic pathos, and such artistic word-painting, that we forgive the defects of the plot, in our admiration of the skill with which it is conducted.
M. W. Dodd has issued a little volume by Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, entitled Hints to Employers. The substance of it was originally delivered in lectures at the Broadway Tabernacle, but the importance of its suggestions eminently deserves a more permanent form. Mr. Thompson handles the subject without gloves, and shows himself as well acquainted with the customs of trade as with the usages of the Church. His strictures on the prevailing methods of business are forcibly put, and have the merit of being directed against systems rather than against individuals. It is far better, for instance, to point out the evils of employing “drummers” to gain custom, than to inveigh against those who can not deviate from established habits without great sacrifice. Abolish an evil system, and the whole community is benefited; while abstaining from it in single cases is only an individual advantage. Mr. Thompson discusses the whole subject with decision and earnestness, but does not deal in wholesale denunciation.
The Collected Edition of Douglas Jerrold’s Writings, is carrying on in weekly numbers and monthly parts. Jerrold’s writing is very unequal, the story
and the style sometimes limping tiresomely; but even then detached thoughts and expressions keep up interest, and few pages pass without presenting a good idea or a good joke.
In announcing a new novel by Bulwer, the London Critic remarks: “Certainly, whatever the faults of ‘our own wayward Bulwer’ (as Miss Martineau fondly calls him), a want of industry can not be laid to his charge. What with novels, dramas, epics, Byronics, editorships, pamphlets, parliamenteering, electioneering, and even agitating, when the interests of the drama and literature seem to require it, BULWER is as hard-working a man as any pale or ruddy-bustling compiler in the reading-room of the British Museum. Close beside him in the advertisement columns (though not in life) is Lady Bulwer, who also announces a new novel, “Molière’s Tragedy: his Life and Times,” another of those “literary novels” which Mr. Grave lately predicted would soon be rife. Lady Bulwer has taken the idea directly from George Sand, who recently produced, with considerable success on the Paris stage, a drama of “Molière,” in which the poet was made the dupe of a heartless coquette. Our English authoress’s title is rather lachrymose for the subject; since Moliere’s life was by no means a tragic, but, on the whole, a pleasant and successful one.”