Yet it should be said, in justice to Professor Clark, that all this startling fusillade occurs at two or three points only, and that reading the rest of the book is like a peaceful voyage down the Mississippi after the few guerilla-haunted spots are passed. The general tone of the book is eminently quiet, reasonable, and free from partisanship. Indeed, this studied moderation of statement sometimes mars even the clearness of the book, and the reader wishes for more emphasis. Professor Clark loves fact so much better than theory, that he sometimes leaves the theory rather obscure, and the precise bearing of the facts doubtful. To this is added the difficulty of a style, earnest and laborious indeed, but by no means luminous. In a treatise professedly popular, one has a right to ask a few more facilities for the general reader. It can hardly be expected of all scientific men to attain the singular success, in this direction, of Professor Huxley; but the art of popularization is too important a thing to be ignored, and much may be done to cultivate the gift by literary training and by persistent effort. The new researches into the origin of life are awakening the interest of all; and though the popular tendency is no doubt towards the views mainly held by Professor Clark, yet most men prefer an interesting speech on the wrong side of any question to a dull speech in behalf of the right.
When one takes the book piecemeal, however, the author's statements of his own observations and analysis are so thorough and so admirable, his drawings so good, and the interest of many separate portions so great, that it seems hardly fair to complain of the rather fragmentary effect of their combination, and the rather obscure tenor of the whole. Professor Clark holds that the old doctrine, Omne vivum ex ovo, is now virtually abandoned by all, since all admit the origin of vast numbers of animated individuals by budding and self-division. There are, in fact, types of animals, as the Zoöphyta, where these appear the normal modes of reproduction, and the egg only an exceptional process. From this he thinks it but a slight step to admit the possibility of spontaneous generation, and he accordingly does admit it. Touching the development theory, his conclusion is that the barriers between the five great divisions of the animal world are insurmountable, but "that, by the multiplication and intensifying of individual differences, and the projection of these upon the branching lines of the courses of development from a lower to a higher life, the diverse and successively more elevated types among each grand division have originated upon this globe." (p. 248.) This sentence, if any, gives the key-note of the book. To say that this is one of its clearest statements, may help to justify the above criticisms on the rest.
A Noble Life. By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," etc. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1866.
The story of a man born cruelly deformed and infirm, with a body dwarfish, but large enough to hold a good heart and clear brain,—and of such a man's living many years of pain, happy in the blessings which his great wealth and high rank, and, above all, his noble nature, enable him to confer on every one approaching him,—could hardly have been told more simply and pathetically than it is in this book, but it might certainly have been told more briefly. The one slight incident of the fiction—the marriage of the Earl of Cainforth's protégée and protectress and dearest friend to his worthless cousin, who, having found out that the heirless Earl will leave her his fortune, wins her heart by deceit, and then does his worst to break it—occurs when the book is half completed, and scarcely suffices to interest, since it is so obvious what the end must be; while the remaining pages, devoted to study of the Earl's character, do not develop much that is new in literature or humanity. Still, the story has its charm: it is healthful, unaffected, and hopeful; and most people will read it through, and be better for having done so.
Literature in Letters; or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History, and Morals, illustrated in the Correspondence of Eminent Persons. Edited by James Holcombe, LL. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.
The very comprehensive title of this work leaves us little to say in explanation of its purpose, and we can only speak in compliment of the taste with which the editor has performed a not very arduous task. As a matter of course, the famous epistles of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Pope, Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, Miss Burney, Lady Russell, and Hannah More go to form a large part of the collection; but Mr. Holcombe has drawn from other sources epistolary material of interest and value, and has performed a service to literature by including in his book the occasional letters of great men not addicted to letter-writing, but no doubt as natural and true to themselves and their time as habitual letter-writers. It is curious to note the deterioration in the artistic quality of the letters as the period of their production approaches our own, when people dash off their correspondence rapidly and incoherently, instead of bestowing upon it the artifice and care which distinguished the epistolarians of an elder date, whose letters, fastidiously written, faithfully read, and jealously kept and shown about in favored circles, supplied the place of newspapers. The lowest ebb of indifference seems to be reached in a letter by Daniel Webster, written from Richmond, and devoted to some very commonplace and jejune praises of morning and early rising. Except as an instance of our epistolary degeneracy, we could hardly wish it to have a place in Mr. Holcombe's collection, which is otherwise so judiciously made.
The Criterion; or the Test of Talk about Familiar Things. A Series of Essays. By Henry T. Tuckerman. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866.
Mr. Tuckerman's books, if they possess no great value as works of original thought, are characterized by the hardly less desirable quality of unfailing good taste. He has a quiet and meditative way of treating those topics of literature and art with which he chiefly loves to deal, and has much in him which reminds of the race of essayists preceding the brilliant dogmatists of our time; and we confess that we find a great enjoyment in the lazy mood in which he here gossips of twenty desultory matters. The name of the present work is, to be sure, a somewhat formidable mask under which to hide the cheerful visage of a rambler among Inns, Pictures, Sepulchres, Statues and Bridges, and a tattler of Authors, Doctors, Holidays, Lawyers, Actors, Newspapers, and Preachers; but it is only a mask after all, and the talk really tests nothing,—not even the reader's patience. With much charming information from books concerning these things, Mr. Tuckerman agreeably blends personal knowledge of many of the subjects. Bits of reminiscence drift down the tranquil current of story and anecdote, and there is just enough of intelligent comment and well-bred discussion to give each paper union and direction. In fine, "The Criterion" is one of the best of that very pleasant class of books made for the days of unoccupied men and the half-hours of busy ones,—which may be laid down at any moment without offence to their purpose, and taken up again with profit to their readers.
The History of Henry the Fifth: King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Heir of France. By George Makepeace Towle. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The doubt whether Mr. Towle is writing historical romance or romantic history must often embarrass the reader of a work uniting the amiable weaknesses of both species of composition, and presenting much more that is tedious in narration, affected in style, and feeble in thought, than we have lately found in any large octavo volume of five hundred pages. We begin with four introductory chapters recounting the events which led to the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and the succession of Mr. Towle's hero to the English throne; we go on with two chapters descriptive of the youthful character and career of Henry the Fifth; we end with six chapters devoted to the facts of his reign. Through all this, it appears to us, we are conducted at a pace of singular equality, not to be lightened by the triviality of minor incidents, nor greatly delayed by the most important occurrences. Nearly all the figures of the picture are in the foreground, and few are more prominent than the least significant accessory of the landscape; and, for once, it is scarcely possible to say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Indeed, we incline to think the contrary, and would have been willing to accept a result somewhat less labored than that given us. We confess, for example, that it is a matter of small interest to us to know that the Duke of Lancaster's wife is the "fair Blanche"; that, when Katharine consented to wed Henry, "a blush mounted her clear temple"; that over every part of her wedding dress "glittered the rarest gems of Golconda"; that Henry's heart "ever beat affectionately for his beloved isle" of England; that at a certain moment of the battle of Agincourt a large body of the French forces "shook in their shoes"; that the crossbow was "an object of wonder and delight to the children of olden chivalry"; that Shakespeare "caressed the fame of the hero-king with the richest coruscations of his genius";—not to name a multitude of other facts stated with equal cost of thought and splendor of diction. But Mr. Towle spares us nothing, and sometimes leaves as little to the opinion of his readers as to their imagination. Having to tell us that Henry learned, in his boyhood, to play upon the harp, he will not poorly say as much, but will lavishly declare, "He learned, with surprising quickness, to play upon that noblest of instruments, the harp"; which is, indeed, a finer turn of language, but, at the same time, an invasion of the secret preference which some of us may feel for the bass-viol or the accordion.