"For thirty years now has Father Sebastian Rasle dwelt in the forest, teaching to its wild, red children the love of God and Mary. He is burned by sun and tanned by wind until he is almost as red as his parishioners. The languages of the Abenaki and Huron, the Algonquin and Illinois, are more familiar to him than the tongue in which his mother taught him the Ave Maria. The huts of Norridgewock contain his people; the river Kennebec flows swiftly past his dwelling to the sea. There he has built a church--handsome, he thinks and says; perhaps it would not much excite our luxurious imagination. At any rate, the altar is handsome; and he has gathered a store of copes and chasubles, albs and embroidered stoles for the dignity of the holy service. He has trained, also, as many as forty Indian boys in the ceremonies, and, in their crimson cassocks and white surplices, they aid the sacred pomp. Besides the church, there are two chapels, one on the road which leads to the forest, [{575}] where the braves are wont to make a short retreat before they start to trap and hunt; the other on the path to the cultivated lands, where prayers are offered when they go to plant or gather in the harvest. The one is dedicated to the guardian angel of the tribe, the other to our most holy mother, Mary Immaculate. To adorn this latter is the especial emulation of the women. Whatever they have of jewels, of silk stuff from the settlements, or delicate embroidery of porcupine-quill, or richly tinted moose-hair, is found here; and from amidst their offerings rises, white and fair, the statue of the Virgin; and her sweet face looks down benignantly upon her swarthy children, kneeling before her to recite their rosaries. One beautiful inanimate ministrant to God's worship they have in abundance--light from wax candles. The wax is not precisely opus apium, but it is a nearer approach to it than you find in richer and less excusable places. It is wax from the berry of the laurels, which cover the hills of Maine. And to the chapel every night and morning come all the Indian Christians. At morning they make their prayer in common, and assist at mass, chanting, in their own dialect, hymns written for that purpose by their pastor. Then they go to their employment for the day; he to his continuous, orderly, and ceaseless labor. The morning is given up to visitors, who come to their good father with their sorrows and disquietudes; to ask his relief against some little injustice of their fellows; his advice on their marriage or other projects. He consoles this one, instructs that, reestablishes peace in disunited families, calms troubled consciences, administers gentle rebuke, or gives encouragement to the timid. The afternoon belongs to the sick, who are visited in their own cabins. If there be a council, the black-robe must come to invoke the Holy Spirit on their deliberations; if a feast, he must be present to bless the viands and to check all approaches to disorder. And always in the afternoon, old and young, warrior and gray-haired squaw, Christian and catechumen, assemble for the catechism. When the sun declines westward, and the shadows creep over the village, they seek the chapel for the public prayer, and to sing a hymn to St. Mary. Then each to his own home; but before bed-time, neighbors gather again, in the house of one of them, and in antiphonal choirs they sing their beads, and with another hymn they separate for sleep."
The work does not need any commendation at our hands; it will assuredly become popular wherever it is introduced, whether it be into the libraries of colleges or literary associations, or into the family circle.
LIFE AND CAMPAIGNS OF LIEUT.-GENERAL U. S. GRANT, from his Boyhood to the Surrender of General Lee; including an accurate account of Sherman's great march from Chattanooga to Washington, and the final official Reports of Sheridan, Meade, Sherman, and Grant; with portraits on steel of Stanton, Grant and his Generals, and other illustrations. By Rev. P.G. Headley, author of Life of Napoleon, Life of Josephine, etc., etc. 8vo, pp. 720. New York: Derby & Miller Publishing Co. 1866.
The title of this work is sufficiently ambitious to justify the expectation that it is really a valuable contribution to our national historical literature. Such is, however, not the case. The only valuable portions of the book are the reports of different commanding generals, which are appended. The style is of the inflated, mock-heroic order, of which we have had a surfeit, especially since the commencement of the late war. The descriptions of battles remind us of a certain class of cheap battle pictures, in which smoke, artillery horses, and men are arranged and rearranged to suit any desired emergency. One is left in doubt in reading the account of the famous charge on the left at Fort Donelson, whether C. F. Smith or Morgan L. Smith was the officer in command. Morgan L. Smith was a brave and valuable officer, but the decisive charge in question was led by C. F. Smith, and was one of the most remarkable and brilliant military exploits of the war. We cannot pretend to wade through all the crudities, platitudes, and mistakes of this bulky volume, manufactured to order, not written. There is one glaring blunder or intentional perversion, in the desire to please every body, which all cannot pass over. The relief of Major-General McClernand in front of Vicksburg is made to appear to be a reluctant act on the part of General Grant. Mr. Headley represents General Grant as complying with an urgent military necessity, at the cost of his friend. This is all sheer nonsense. There was and could be no friendship between Grant and McClernand. One might as well expect fellowship between light and darkness. There was a military necessity to remove McClernand, for every day that he commanded a corps imperilled the safety of the whole army. Sherman and McPherson united in demanding his removal, [{576}] and General Grant chose the right moment to relieve him--when he had demonstrated his incapacity, or worse, to the mind of every soldier on the field, and ruined forever the false popularity he had acquired as a politician of the lowest grade. Mr. Headley makes an unsuccessful effort to glaze over General Wallace's unaccountable delay in coming up to the field of' Shiloh. In fact, he deals in indiscriminate praise for an obvious reason, and like all such people is certain to get very little himself from his critics. The book no doubt sells, and will probably stimulate a desire to read the authentic histories which will in due season appear, and of which Wm. Swinton's History of the Army of the Potomac (not without its faults) is a specimen. We expect a first-class scientific History of the War. Major-General Schofield is the man to write it, when the proper time arrives.
POETRY, LYRICAL, NARRATIVE, AND SATIRICAL, OF THE CIVIL WAR. Selected and edited by Richard Grant White. 12mo, pp. 384. American News Co.
Mr. White's preface to this volume of selected poetry is the best criticism which the book could have, and is an exhaustive and elegant essay. It is a remarkably complete collection of the pieces which have appeared from time to time in the progress of the war. The value of such a work is in its completeness less than in the merits of the compositions selected. We should be glad to see another edition, containing some which have been overlooked or omitted. The value of such a collection increases with time, and it will be eagerly sought for and highly prized when the hateful, painful, and commonplace features of the struggle have softened into the elements of pleasing reminiscence and romance, and become the incentives to heroism and patriotism to unborn children.
A TEXT BOOK ON PHYSIOLOGY. For the use of Schools and Colleges, being an Abridgement of the author's larger work on Human Physiology. By John William Draper, M.D., LL.D., author of A Treatise on Human Physiology, and A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, etc. 12mo, pp. 376. Harper & Brothers, 1866.
A TEXT BOOK ON CHEMISTRY. For the use of Schools and Colleges. By Henry Draper, M.D., Professor Adjunct of Chemistry and Natural History in the University of New York. 12mo, pp. 507. Harper & Brothers. 1866.
The Drapers, father and sons, present the rare example in this materialistic age and most materialistic city, of a whole family devoted to literary and scientific pursuits, and working in that harmony which the sincere and loyal pursuit of science is sure to produce. Although we have had occasion to differ with Professor Draper in his philosophical and some of his political deductions, we admire his intellect and attainments, and in the purely scientific order consider him entitled to the highest consideration and respect. He is a close student and an original observer, and we believe him ardently and faithfully devoted to the ascertainment of exact scientific truth.
His sons are men of great promise, and have already done more in their short lives in the respective departments of natural science than many of twice their age.