As the title indicates, the essays contained in this volume are already known to the readers of The Atlantic.
Wherever Dr. Holmes sounds, he is sure to light upon pearls and golden sands, and scatter them about with a profusion so reckless that we feel convinced the supply is not to be exhausted. Scientist and poet, analyst and creator, full of keen satire, genial humor, and tender pathos, who may compete with him in varied gifts, or rival the charm of intellectual grace which he breathes at will into all he writes?
The contents of this volume are: 'Bread and the Newspaper,' 'My Hunt After the Captain,' 'The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,' 'Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture,' 'Doings of the Sunbeam,' 'The Human Wheel, its Spokes and Felloes,' 'A Visit to the Autocrat's Landlady,' 'A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters,' 'The Great Instrument,' 'The Inevitable Trial.'
Hints for the Nursery; or, The Young Mother's Guide. By Mrs. C. A. Hopkinson. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1863. For sale by Blakeman & Mason.
A valuable and instructive little book, eminently calculated to spare the rising generation many a pang in body and mind, and the youthful mother many a heartache.
Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, at their Emigration to New England, 1630. By Robert C. Winthrop. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
This work is dedicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, who have honored the author with their presidency for eight years past. It is rather an autobiography than a biography, and an autobiography of the most trustworthy kind, 'written accidentally and unconsciously, as it were, in familiar letters or private journals, or upon the records of official service.' Such a Life is the volume before us. The most skilful use has been made of his material by our author. John Winthrop the elder, through contemporaneous records, in the familiar language of private correspondence and diary, tells us the story of a considerable part of his career in his own words, Cotton Mather says of him: ... 'This third Adam Winthrop was the father of that renowned John Winthrop, who was the father of New England, and the founder of a colony, which, upon many accounts, like him that founded it, may challenge the first place among the English glories of America.'
The volume also offers us in great detail a picture not only of the outward life, but of the inmost thoughts, motives, and principles of the American Puritans. Valuable to the antiquarian, it will also interest, in its naive pictures of home life, the general reader.
The brave and brilliant Theodore Winthrop, who gave up his young life to his country in the battle of Big Bethel, has rendered this name dear to all loyal Americans.
Round the Block. An American Novel. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 and 445 Broadway.