NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
We never longed so much for greater space for our Notes upon Books as we do at this season of gifts and good will, when the Christmas Books demand our notice.
Never did writer pen a sweeter tale than that which the author of Mary Barton has just produced under the title of The Moorland Cottage. It is a purely English story, true to nature as a daguerreotype, without one touch of exaggeration, without the smallest striving after effect, yet so skilfully is it told, so effectually does it tell, so strongly do Maggie's trials and single-mindedness excite our sympathies, that it were hard to decide whether our tears are disposed to flow the more readily at those trials, or at her quiet heroic perseverance in doing right by which they are eventually surmounted. The Moorland Cottage with its skilful and characteristic woodcut illustrations by Birket Foster, will be a favourite for many and many a Christmas yet to come.
Rich in all the bibliopolic "pearl and gold" of a quaint and fanciful binding, glancing with holly berries and mistletoe, Mr. Bogue presents us with a volume as interesting as it is characteristic and elegant, Christmas with the Poets. A more elegantly printed book was never produced; and it is illustrated with fifty engravings designed and drawn on wood by Birket Foster; engraved by Henry Vizetelly, and printed in tints in a way to render most effective the artist's tasteful, characteristic, and very able drawings. The volume is, as it were, a casket, in which are enshrined all the gems which could be dug out of the rich mines of English poetry; and when we say that the first division treats of Carols from the Anglo-Norman period to the time of the Reformation; that these are followed by Christmas Poems of the Elizabethan period, by Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and their great cotemporaries; that to these succeed Herrick's Poems, and so on, till we have the Christmas verses of our own century, by Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, Tennyson, &c., we have done more than all our praise could do, to prove that a fitter present to one who loves poetry could not be found than Christmas with the Poets.
While if it be a little lover of poetry—mind, not one who little loves poetry, but one who listens with delight to those beloved ditties of the olden times, which as we know charmed Shakspeare's childhood,—learn that an English lady, with the hand and taste of an artist, guided and refined by that purest and holiest of feelings, a mother's love, has illustrated those dear old songs in a way to delight all children; and at the same time charm the most refined. The Illustrated Ditties of the Olden Time is in sooth a delightful volume, and if a love of the beautiful be as closely connected with a love of the moral as wise heads tell us, we know no more agreeable way of early inculcating morality than by circulating this splendid edition of our time-honoured Nursery Rhymes.
But we fancy the taste of some of our readers may not yet have been hit upon. Let them try The Story of Jack and the Giants, illustrated by Richard Doyle; and they will find this wondrous story rendered still more attractive by some thirty drawings, from the pencil of one of the most imaginative artists of the day, and whose artistic spirit seems to have revelled with delight as he pourtrayed the heroic achievements of "the valiant Cornish man."
We will now turn to those works which are of a somewhat graver class; and we will begin with Miss Drury's able and well-written story, entitled Eastbury, in which the heavy trials of Beatrice Eustace, mitigated and eventually overcome through the friendship and truthfulness of Julia Seymour, are told in a manner to delight all readers of the class of tales to which Eastbury belongs; and to sustain the reputation as a writer, which Miss Drury so deservedly acquired by her former story, Friends and Fortune.
The name of the Rev. Charles B. Tayler would alone have served as a sufficient warrant that The Angel's Song, a Christmas Token, is work of still more serious character, even though the author had not told his readers, in his Envoy, that the tale was written to correct the mistake into which many well-meaning people have fallen on the subject of Christmas merriment; and to suggest the spirit in which this sacred season should be celebrated. That the book will be favourably received by the large class of readers to whom it is addressed, there can be little doubt; and to their attention we accordingly commend it. It is very tastefully got up.
To the publisher of The Angel's Song, Mr. Sampson Low, we are also indebted for a very stirring and interesting book, The Whaleman's Adventures in the Southern Ocean, edited by the Rev. Dr. Scoresby, from the notes of a pious and observant American clergyman, whilst embarked, on account of his health, on a whaling voyage to the South Seas and Pacific Ocean. That Dr. Scoresby should think the matter of this work so far novel and interesting, as well as "calculated for conveying useful moral impressions," renders it scarcely necessary to say another word in its recommendation. But it has a higher object than mere amusement; its object is to enforce upon those "who go down to the sea in ships," the duty of "remembering the Sabbath Day to keep it holy."
Here our editorial labours have been interrupted by a band of infant critics to whose unprejudiced judgments we had entrusted Peter Little and the Lucky Sixpence,—each begging to be allowed to keep the book. Good reader, do you wish for better criticism? Worthy author of this Verse Book for Children, do you wish for higher praise?