From a forthcoming volume by Alice Carey, Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West, (to be published early in December by J. S. Redfield,) we copy a specimen chapter, under the title of "The Old Man's Death," into another part of this magazine. It has no particular excellence to distinguish it from the rest of the work; indeed it is rather below than above the average of Miss Carey's recent compositions; but we may safely challenge to it the scrutiny of critics capable of appreciating the finest capacities for the illustration of pastoral life. If we look at the entire catalogue of female writers of prose fiction in this country we shall find no one who approaches Alice Carey in the best characteristics of genius. Like all genuine authors she has peculiarities; her hand is detected as unerringly as that of Poe or Hawthorne; as much as they she is apart from others and above others; and her sketches of country life must, we think, be admitted to be superior even to those delightful tales of Miss Mitford, which, in a similar line, are generally acknowledged to be equal to any thing done in England. It is the fault of our literary women that they are commonly careless and superficial, and that in stories, when they attempt this sort of writing, they are for the most part but feeble copyists, without individuality, and without naturalness. We can point to very few exceptions to this rule, but among such exceptions Alice Carey is eminent. The book which is announced by Mr. Redfield is without the tinsel, or sickly sentiment, or impudent smartness, which distinguish some contemporary publications by women, but it will establish for her an enviable reputation as an original and most graphic delineator of at least one class in American society—the middle class, in the rural neighborhoods, with whom rest, in our own as in other countries, the real distinctions of national character, and the best elements of national greatness.
Mr. Henry Ingalls, a writer of considerable abilities, displayed chiefly in anonymous compositions on questions in law, writes to a friend in New-York from Paris, that he has devoted two years to the investigation of pretended miracles in modern Europe; that the number of alleged miracles in the Roman Catholic church of which he has exact historical materials, is over one thousand; that the analyses of these will be amply suggestive of the character of the rest; and that his work on the subject, to make three or four large and closely printed volumes, will conclusively show complicity on the part of the highest authorities of the church, in "the frauds that are now most notorious and most generally acknowledged."
Mr. Ingalls is of opinion that his work will be eminently curious in literary, philosophical, and religious points of view, and that it cannot fail of usefulness, especially in illustrating the silly credulity which has obtained in such poor juggleries as have lately been practiced by the Smiths, Davises, Fishes, Harrises, and other imposters and mountebanks of this country.
Among the new works in press by the Appletons is a new novel entitled Adrian, or the Clouds of the Mind—the joint production of Mr. G. P. R. James and Mr. Maunsell B. Field. Such partnerships in literature were common in the days of Elizabeth, and in our own country we have instances in the production of Yamoyden, by Sands and Eastburn, &c. Mr. Field is not yet a veteran, but he is a writer of fine talents and much cultivation. Among the original papers in the present number of the International is a poem from his hand, under the title of Greenwood.
The first volume of a History of the German Reformed Church, by the late Rev. Dr. Lewis Mayer, has been published in Philadelphia; and Professor Schaff, of Mercersburg, has printed in German the first volume of a History of the Christian Church, from its Establishment to the Present Time. Dr. Murdock, the well-known translator of Mosheim's History, has published a translation of the celebrated Syriac version of the New Testament, called the Peshito.