2. Christian's Mistake. By the Author of "John Halifax." New York: Harper & Brothers.
3. Uncle Silas. A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. By J. S. Le Fanu. New York: Harper & Brothers.
While the American popularity of Charles Kingsley has been rather declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising. Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion and ends in a rather feeble result. To deal with two large families, distributing part of each in England and part in Australia, to interlink them in the most complicated way in all genealogical and topographical relations, demands a structural genius like that of Eugène Sue; and though Mr. Kingsley grapples stoutly with the load, he staggers under it. His descriptions of scenery are as vivid as his brother's, and he exhibits far less arrogance and no theology. There are in the book single scenes of great power, and there has never, perhaps, been a more vivid portraiture of lower-middle-class life in England, or of the manner in which it has been galvanized into a semi-American development in Australia. The results of that expatriation upon more cultivated classes, however, appear such as we should be sorry to call even demi-semi-American. Fancy discovering in California a young lady in book-muslin, the daughter of cultivated parents, who remarks under excitement,—"Well, if this don't bang wattle-gum, I wish I may be buried in the bush in a sheet of bark! Why, I feel all over centipedes and copper-lizards!" Still, there may be some confusion in the dialects used in the book, as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony in the language of British emotion.
There is rather a want of central unity to the book, but, so far as it has a main thread, it seems to be the self-devotion of a sister who prefers her brother to her lover. This furnishes a pleasant change from the recent favorite theme of ladies who prefer their lovers to their husbands.
To this latter class of novels, based on what may be called the centrifugal forces of wedlock, "Christian's Mistake" perhaps belongs. Its clear and practised style is refreshing, after the comparative crudeness of some other recent treatises on the same theme; the characters are human, not wooden, and the whole treatment healthful and noble.
"Uncle Silas" is the climax of the sensational, and goes as far beyond Mrs. Wood as she beyond Miss Braddon, or she beyond reason and comfortable daylight reading.
The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart. By William L. Stone. Albany: J. Munsell.
We well remember the interest with which, more than twenty years ago, we heard that Mr. William L. Stone was preparing a life of Sir William Johnson. His collection of material was very large, comprising several thousands of original letters, besides a great mass of other papers. He had written, however, but a small part of his work, when death put a period to his labors, and the documents which he had gathered with such enthusiastic industry seemed destined to remain a crude mass of undigested material. We think it fortunate for all students of American history, that a son, bearing his name and inheriting in the fullest measure his capacity for the work, has undertaken its completion, partly from affection and a sense of duty, and partly, it is evident, from a natural aptitude.
In the whole range of American history no other personage appears so remarkable in character and so important in influence, and at the same time so little known to general readers, as Sir William Johnson. The reason is, that his great powers were exercised on a theatre which, though vast and wellnigh boundless, was exterior to the familiar field of political action. Yet on the single influence of this man depended at times the prosperity and growth of all the British American colonies. Could France have won his influence in her behalf, England could not have broken that rival power in America without an exhausting expenditure of men and treasure, and without leaders of a different stamp from the blockheads with whom she long continued to paralyze her Cisatlantic armies. At the darkest crisis of the last French War, the influence of Johnson alone saved the English colonies from the miseries which would have ensued from the enmity of the powerful confederacy of the Six Nations; and for many years after, in his capacity of Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he continued to exercise an unparalleled power over the tribes of the interior, soothing their jealousies, composing their quarrels, and protecting them with equal justice, benevolence, and ability from the fraud and outrage of encroaching whites.
Johnson settled on the Mohawk in his youth, and immediately fell into relations with his savage neighbors. He was accustomed to join their sports and assume their dress; and it is an evidence of the native force and dignity of his character, that, in thus taking a course which commonly provoked their contempt, he gained their affection, without diminishing their respect and admiration. He gained a military reputation—not unqualified—by the Battle of Lake George, in 1755, where he commanded the British force; and he won brighter laurels by the capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. His true fame rests, however, on his civic achievements,—on the tact, energy, and judgment, the humanity and breadth of views, with which he managed the important interest placed in his hands. It would be hard to say whether the Indians or the Colonists profited most by his influence; for while with a fearless adroitness he overthrew the schemes of hungry speculators, he averted from peaceful settlers many a peril of whose existence, perhaps, they were unaware. He gave peace to the borders, and sweetened, as far as lay in the power of man, that bitter cup which had fallen to the lot of the wretched races of the forest.