[LITERARY RECORD.]
'Wanderings on the Seas and Shores of Africa.'—The first part of this serial work has at least the effective merit of making us earnestly desire its successor. The author, Dr. Bacon, a brother as we learn of Rev. Leonard Bacon, New-Haven, Conn., has embodied in it his observations and adventures, during a residence of seven months at Monrovia, Liberia, of nine or ten months at Cape Palmas, two months at Sierra Leone, two months on the River Gambia, nearly two months on the Senegal, and numerous voyages along the coast of Senegambia and Guinea, from the Great Desert of Sahara to the Gold Coast; with visits to various missionary stations, slave factories, trading places, and native towns before undescribed. 'It presents a large mass of entirely new facts, of the most valuable and important character on the subjects of the slave-trade, colonization, Christian missions, African commerce, etc. It furnishes, also, the results of considerable experience and medical practice in the peculiar diseases of the coast, with various observations on the topography, geology, natural history, and ethnography of extensive regions hitherto scarcely known by name. These facts are given precisely in the order in which they came to the voyager's knowledge, in connection with a personal narrative replete with adventures of a remarkable kind, detailing wanderings, sufferings, and dangers among savage tribes, and extreme exposures to storms and shipwreck.' With the exception perhaps of 'Two Years before the Mast,' we remember no work which affords so vivid a description of the sea, and the astronomical wonders of the Southern heavens, as these 'Wanderings.' They possess great merit, and afford promise of various excellence in future numbers.
Since the foregoing was 'committed to types,' we have received a second number of the work; and find the promise of the first more than redeemed. We foresee that the plain-speaking of the writer bodes no good to the cause of Liberian colonization. He tells us only what he has seen, and what he knows to be true. Arrived at Monrovia, we find him at board with the black governor, whose 'lady' is his laundress, although belonging of course to the 'berry fust circles of good siety.' We derive some curious facts from Dr. Bacon, connected with colonization matters: for example; that in the main the colonists, from the highest to the lowest, are a hypocritical, ungrateful, and frequently dishonest people; that the books (the refuse, too often, of the libraries of those among us who claim to be 'benefactors' of Liberia) which are sent from America, are not read but are torn up, eaten by cockroaches, or otherwise destroyed; that our Bibles and Tracts are as useless to the ignorant natives as if they were in Hebrew; that fruitful as the country has been represented to be, the dependence for even the necessaries of life is on foreign supplies, the flour and a large proportion of the meat being imported; the writer 'never saw fifty stalks of sugar-cane in the fields of the colonists,' nor could he obtain an ounce of 'Liberian coffee,' the stories which reach us concerning the Liberian 'coffee plantations' being wholly humbugeous, and intended only for effect here. Among the writer's colonial patients, was 'a daughter of Thomas Jefferson, who had with her a niece, the grand-daughter of the great American President and apostle of democracy, who bore a most striking resemblance to his common portraits!' This is not pleasant to think of. The American opinion of 'the venerated Ashmun' it appears greatly needs revision. He is proved to have been 'an unworthy man and a deceiver;' so much so, indeed, that the writer freely expresses his 'contempt and abhorrence of his character,' which were so great as to cause the Doctor, on his return to America, to cause the name, which had been placed in a stereotype work, 'at the end of such a catalogue of saints as 'Brainard, Mills, Martyn, Parsons, Fiske, Milne,' to be beaten into the solid metal page, that it might no longer disgrace its association!' These facts may be unpalatable to the American Colonization Society, but that they are facts, there can be little doubt; since they proceed from the mouth of the Society's accredited agent, under whose auspices he repaired to and resided at Liberia.
Mr. Lunt's Poem on Culture.—A neatly-printed little volume, in dress of modest drab, lies before us, containing 'Culture; a poem delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association,' in October last, by George Lunt, Esq., an honorary member of the institution. The first glance made us reluct at encountering in the outset the writer's formidable-looking preface. 'If this,' thought we, 'be what the Italians term la salsa del libro, 'the sauce of the book,' there is much more of the condiment than of the meat.' We were gratified to find however in this mere 'preface' an able essay upon a theme which has more than once been discussed in these pages; namely, the true philosophy of poetry, and its influence, actual and collateral, upon society, in contradistinction to utilitarianism, and those principles of expediency, which 'repudiate' imagination, and vitiate our perception of truth. The poem itself abounds in good thoughts, vented with much music of expression; all which we could abundantly prove, had we space for extracts. As it is, we must ask such of our readers as may have at command the volume before us, to turn to the twenty-fourth page of the poem, and admire with us the illustration of 'Mind,' in more senses than one, which may there be found; and when they have exhausted that admirable passage, let them turn to another, which we had also marked for insertion, commencing on the thirty-fourth and ending on the thirty-sixth page. Next to presenting good things, perhaps some kind reader may admit, is the pointing them out. 'And here, may it please the court, we rest.'
'The Opal: a pure Gift for the Holydays.'—This is an exceedingly pretty moral and religious annual, edited by N. P. Willis, illustrated by J. G. Chapman, and published by John C. Riker, Number Fifteen Ann-street. The illustrations, nine in number, are mainly in the light and pleasing style of etching, which Mr. Chapman has rendered so popular, and in subject alternate with Scripture scenes and fancy-sketches of a domestic or religious character. The literary articles are from the pens of well-known American writers, including, beside the Editor's, those of Wilde, Herbert, Aldrich, Benjamin, Hoffman, Cheever, Robert Morris, Palmer, Tuckerman, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Seba Smith, W. H. Burleigh, etc. We commend the work cordially to our readers, regretting that we can find no space for extracts, at the late hour at which the volume reaches us; save only the following explanatory passage from the preface: 'Religious books, devoted solely to the inculcation of the precepts of piety, are all-important as one branch of instruction and reading. But God, who made all things for his creatures, and gave them taste, fancy, and a sense exquisitely alive to the beautiful, intended no ascetic privation of the innocent objects which minister to these faculties. The mirth, and the playful elegances of poetry and descriptive writing are as truly within the paths of religious reading as any thing else which shows the fullness and variety of the provision made for our happiness, when at peace with ourselves. Nothing gay, if innocent, is out of place in an annual intended to be used as a tribute of affection by the good.' The work is 'opal-hued, reflecting all the bright lights and colors which the prodigality of God's open hand has poured upon the pathway of life.'
'Jeanie Morrison.'—This beautiful and touching ballad of the gentle Motherwell has been set to music by 'Dempster, the true-blue Scot,' as Burns called his namesake, and dedicated to his friend James T. Fields, Esq., Boston. The music, as we gather from capable judges, is in good keeping with the feeling and sweet simplicity of the verse; and surely higher praise need not be awarded to it. The poem itself would have done honor to Burns, and a nearer approach to his style we scarcely remember ever to have seen. How fervent, how natural, this retrospect of a first, fresh boyish love:
'My head runs round and round about,
My heart flows like a sea,
As one by one the thoughts rush back
O' spring-time and o' thee.
O morning life! O morning love!
O lightsome days and lang.
When honied hopes around our hearts
Like simmer blossoms sprang!
O, mind ye, love, how oft we left
The deavin,' dinsome town.
To wander by the green burnside,
And hear its waters croon?
The simmer leaves hung o'er our heads,
The flowers burst round our feet,
And in the gloamin' o' the wood
The throstle whistled sweet.'
The publisher of 'Jeanie Morrison' is Mr. Oliver Ditson, Boston; but we infer that it is also for sale at the principal music-stores in this city.
Poems by Barry Cornwall.—Messrs. William D. Ticknor and Company, Boston, have just given to the public a neatly-executed volume, containing 'English Songs and other Poems,' by Barry Cornwall. It will be an acceptable offering to American readers. Procter is a very charming, heart-full writer. To adopt the language of another, there is an intense and passionate beauty, a depth of affection, in his little dramatic poems, which appear even in the affectionate triflings of his gentle characters. 'He illustrates that holiest of human emotions, which, while it will twine itself with the frailest twig, or dally with the most evanescent shadow of creation, wasting its excess of kindliness on all around it, is yet able to 'look on tempests and be never shaken.' Love is gently omnipotent in his poems; accident and death itself are but passing clouds, which scarcely vex and which cannot harm it. The lover seems to breathe out his life in the arms of his mistress, as calmly as the infant sinks into its softest slumber. The fair blossoms of his genius, though light and trembling at the breeze, spring from a wide, and deep, and robust stock, which will sustain far taller branches without being exhausted.'