Mr. Dicken's "David Copperfield" is at length completed, and Mr. Wiley has published it in two handsome volumes, profusely illustrated. There is a variety of opinions among the critics as to its rank among the works of "Boz"; but it is not contended by any that it evinces a decay of his extraordinary and peculiar genius. We copy a paragraph which strikes us as just, from the Spectator:
"This story has less of London life and town-bred character than most of its predecessors; but what may thus be gained in variety is lost in raciness, breadth, and effect. The peculiar classes forced into existence by the hotbed of a great city, and owing a part of their gusto to town usage, may be narrow enough if compared with general nature, but they are broader than the singularities whom Mr. Dickens copies or invents as representatives of genteel country life, or human nature in general. In the mere style there is frequently an improvement—less effort and greater ease, with occasional touches of the felicity of Goldsmith; but we should have thought the work was likely to be less popular than many of the previous tales of Mr. Dickens, as well as rather more open to unfavorable criticism. Any prose fiction that is to take rank in the first class, must have what in epic poetry is called a fable,—some lesson of life embodied in a story that combines the utile and the dulce. This fable should not only please the reader by its succession of coherent events, and by the variety of its persons and fortunes, but should touch by appeals to the common kinship of humanity, and teach worldly conduct of ethical lessons by particular incidents, as well as by the general development. And when this end is attained, whether by design or instinct, technical rules are readily forgotten; even the great rule of unity of action can be dispensed with. It does not appear that Mr. Dickens has the critical training necessary to feel the importance of this principle, or a knowledge of life sufficiently deep and extensive to enable him to embody it unconsciously, as a well-chosen story will always compel an author to do. So far as David Copperfield appears designed with any other object than as a vehicle for writing a number of sketches, it would seem intended to trace the London career of an inexperienced young man, with infirmity of purpose, a dangerous friend, and no very experienced advisers. Any purpose of this kind is only prosecuted by snatches; "the theme" is constantly deserted, and matters are introduced that have no connection with the hero further than his being present at them, or their occurring to his acquaintance. In fact, from the time that David Copperfield emerges from boyhood, the interest in his adventures ceases, beyond that sort of feeling which many readers entertain of wishing to know 'how it ends.'"
Mr. David Dudley Field, of this city, one of the three commissioners who prepared the amended Code of the State of New-York, abolishing the distinction in procedure between law and equity, being in England for a brief visit, was invited by the leading members of the Law Amendment Society to give some account of the great changes effected here in the administration of justice. He complied, and a meeting of the Society was summoned specially to hear him. The result is much remarked upon in nearly all the London journals. Mr. Field is a clear headed man, master of his subject, perspicuous in his rhetoric, and distinct in his elocution, so that our new constitution was most advantageously displayed before his learned and critical hearers. The Spectator says of the subject:
"The visit of Mr. Dudley Field to England, and his interesting statements to the members of our Law Amendment Society, are real events in the progress of law reform in this country. The injustice which the English people submit to in the revered name of Law, and in the sacred but in their case profaned name of Equity, is more enormous than the future historian will be able remotely to conceive. The keystone of the barbarous Gothic portal to Justice in our common-law procedure was struck out some twenty years ago, when the logical forms of legal contest were reduced to their now moderate number; other heavy blows have further undermined the ruin, and almost cleared away whatever was feudal in that portion of the edifice; and then came the raising of the new and noble portal of the County Courts. Still, in all but the most trivial litigation the delay and expense are such that justice can only be had at a percentage utterly disgraceful to a nation either honest or merely clearheaded and commercial. We still preserve a diversity of tribunals, to administer laws that ought not to be inharmonious; and we are prevented from making the laws harmonious by the difficulties of finding tribunals able to rule the concord and administer the whole field of law as a single empire. In this case, as in a multitude of others, our young relations across the Atlantic have done that which we only longed to do. In this rivalry of nations, far above all other rivalries, they have pushed development of institutions which they received from forefathers common to us both, to a more rapid perfection than we. Mr. Dudley Field is one of three men who framed a constitutional law for the State of New York, under which the courts of legal and equitable jurisdiction have been successfully merged; the enactment has succeeded in practical working; and the spectacle of "Equity swallowing up Law" has been so edifying to the citizens of his State, that three other States of the Union have resolved to enact, and four further States have appointed conferences to deliberate upon, a similar procedure. It is impossible—however narrow-minded lawyers may object—that what Americans find practicable and beneficial should be either impracticable or disadvantageous to Englishmen."
A second part of the "Historical Collections of Louisiana," by B. F. French, has been published by Mr. Putnam. It contains some interesting papers, among which are translations of an original letter of Hernando de Soto, on the Conquest of Florida, of a brief account of de Soto's memorable expedition to Florida, from a recently discovered manuscript by a writer named Biedma, and Hackluyt's translation of the longer narrative "by a gentleman of Elvas." It is to be followed, we understand, by a second volume.
Elihu Burritt is one of those people who are filled with the comfortable assurance of their own greatness. He seems always to regard the mob of men as very diminutive creatures, while his introverted glances are through a lens which reveals a character of qualities and proportions the most extraordinary. This is unfortunate. It renders Mr. Elihu Burritt, par excellence, the bore of his generation. He is really a person of very small abilities; of very little information, considering the opportunities presented by his travels; and the "learned blacksmith" has no learning at all. He had, indeed, an unusual facility in acquiring words, but he knows nothing of languages; not having in any a particle of scholarship; of the philosophy, even of his mother tongue, being as ignorant as the bellows-hand in his smithy at Worcester. But because of this not uncommon faculty of acquiring words—acquiring them as Zerah Colburn did a certain mastery of figures, without being able to comprehend any principle of mathematics—Mr. Everett, or some one else, advertised him as "learned," and ever since he has neglected his fit vocation to crowd himself into conspicuous places, all over Christendom; to blow continually his penny whistle in the ears of the little people called philanthropists; to speak and write in addresses and letters immense aggregations of ambitious platitudes, to pontiffs, emperors, kings, parliaments, etc., respecting their particular affairs, all of which addresses and letters are as cogent as the barkings sent by a lap-dog toward the moon, and receive from all sorts of people, except diminutives and impertinents whose profession is "philanthropy," just about as much consideration as Dian yields to the fast-yelping cur. It is all unfortunate, for poor Elihu Burritt will never be persuaded that he is a subject of derision only, instead of admiration; that men pause to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the world wants a new fool.