The London Quarterly Review is especially severe on Fanny Kemble's Journal—while an article on the same subject in the last New England Review is as particularly lenient. The paper in the Quarterly is from the pen of Lockhart.
Dr. Bird is preparing for the press a new novel under the name of The Hawks of Hawk's Hollow. The adventures of a band of refugees, who during the revolutionary war infested the banks of the Delaware, will form the groundwork of the story.
Halleck's Poems are in press, and will speedily be published. This announcement has been received with universal pleasure. As a writer of light, airy and graceful things, Halleck is inimitable.
Mr. Simms, author of the Yemassee, has in preparation a novel founded upon incidents in the war of the revolution in South Carolina. He will thus find himself at issue with Mr. Kennedy in Horse-Shoe Robinson. De Kalb, Marion, Gates, and a host of other worthies will figure in the pages of Mr. Simms.
We are looking for The Gift with great anxiety. This annual will have few, perhaps no rivals any where. Its embellishments are of the very highest order of excellence; and a galaxy of talent has been enlisted in its behalf. It is edited by Miss Leslie, and will be issued from the press of Carey and Lea early in September.
In conclusion. Charles Kemble is reported to have said that Fanny's is, beyond doubt, the best and truest book ever published, with the exception of Byron and the Bible.
TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.
It has been our custom, hitherto, to offer some few Editorial Remarks explanatory, complimentary, or otherwise, upon each individual article in every Messenger. For this we had many reasons which it will be unnecessary to mention in detail. But although, in the infancy of our journal, such a course might have seemed to us expedient, we are now under no obligation to continue it. We shall therefore, for the future, suffer our various articles to speak for themselves, and depend upon their intrinsic merit for support.
In our next will appear No. VIII of the Tripoline Sketches: No. III of the Autobiography of Pertinax Placid: and many other papers which we have been forced for the present to exclude. Many poetical favors are under consideration.