furious, an assault upon our ears and our patience, only endurable because we see the end. Such is this poem, which, indeed, it is sad to call a poem, especially in these hard days." Of Longfellow's Hiawatha, which, it seems, has sold well, and has professed admirers in England as well as here, the critic truthfully observes: "Hiawatha contains a morsel of a love-story, and a glimpse of a grief; but these do not occupy more than a few pages, and are by no means important in the song. The consequence is, of course, that we listen to it entirely unmoved. It was not meant to move us The poet intends only that we should admire him, and be attracted by the novelty of his subject; and so we do admire him; and so we are amused by the novel syllables, attracted by the chime of the rhythm, and the quaint conventionalities of the savage life. But we cannot conceal from ourselves that it is conventional, though it is savage; and that, in reality, we see rather less of the actual human life and nature under the war-paint of the Indian than is to be beheld every day under the English broadcloth. The muse is absolute in her conditions; we cannot restrain her actual footsteps; from the highest ideal to the plainest matter of fact there is no forbidden ground to the wandering minstrel; but it is the very secret of her individuality, that wherever she goes she sounds upon the chords of her especial harp, the heart; vibrations of human feeling ring about her in her wayfaring; the appeal of the broken heart, and the shout of the glad one thrust in to the very pathway where her loftiest abstraction walks in profounder calm; and though it may please her to amuse herself among social vanities now and then, we are always reminded of her identity by a deeper touch, a sudden glance aside into the soul of things, a glimpse of that nature which makes the whole world kin. It is this perpetual returning, suddenly, involuntarily, and almost unawares, to the closest emotions of the human life, which distinguishes among his fellows the true poet. It is the charin of his art that he startles us in an instant, and when we least expected it, out of mere admiration into tears; but such an effect, unfortunately, can never be produced by customs, or improvements, or social reforms. The greatest powers of the external world are as inadequate to this as are the vanities of a village; and even a combination of both is a fruitless expedient. No, Mr. Longfellow has not shot his arrow this time into the heart of the oak; the dart has glaneed aside, and fallen idly among the brushwood. His song is a quaint chant, a happy illustration of manners; but it lacks all the important elements which go to the making of a poem. We are interested, pleased, attracted, yet perfectly indifferent; the measure haunts our ear, but not the matter; and we care no more for Hiawatha, and are still as little concerned for the land of the Ojibbeways, as if Amerca's best minstrel had never made a song." MISS MURRAY's silly book of travels is handled more roughly by the critics of England than by those of this country. The Eclectic Review says: lady's mind, one important principle seems to have been omitted. She does not seem to have learned that a human being, whether male or female, does not hold the rights of parentage, marriage, education, or personal freedom on the tenure of the color either of skin or hair. Hence, she is, as far as a cursory recollection serves us, the only English lady, at least of modern times, who has advocated negro slavery; indeed, she appears to regard it as a most beneficent institution, appointed by Providence for the purpose of making good Christians of an indefinite number of men, women, and children. Indeed, Miss Murray has undertaken out and out the defense of slavery. The buying and selling operation,' she says, is certainly very unpleasant and revolting to our ideas, and the whites here dislike it; but it is curious how very little is thought of the matter by the blacks themselves.' Nay, Miss Murray informs us that the most intelligent free black whom she has met expressed his sorrow that he had not been born a slave. The sheer silliness of the authoress may be estimated by these citations." "Young ladies have an unquestionable right to travel to whatever part of the globe they see fit, and to seek to improve their minds by a more extended observation of human nature than is afforded by evening parties in Belgravia, Tyburnia, &c. As unquestionable, also, is the right of the said young ladies to commit their impressions to paper, and transmit them from distant clines for the entertainment of their brothers and sisters at home; but to publish their diaries, and thus to challenge the attention of the public, is a very different and a much more hazardous affair. To a family circle the tame adventures, and still tamer remarks and disquisitions of the Honorable Miss Murray would, doubtless, be tolerable enough; but, destitute as they are of all originality and of all intellectual force, they are to the public absolutely insupportable. What matters it to any intelligent reader, male or female, whether Miss Murray got her feet wet at NewOrleans; that Mr. G. met her unexpectedly at the railway station at Utica; that the children of Mrs. W. are pretty, and apparently well brought up; and that a trip on each and such a river was taken by Miss Murray alone, because her female companions were afraid of rheumatism? All this is silly enough; but there is worse behind. Among the many matters with which a Belgravian education has studded the surface of this DARK CHURCHES.-There is a growing propensity to imitate, in our American churches, what is called "the dim religious light" of European cathedrals. Blinds and stained glass, dark-colored drapery, and somber-hued upholstery, are growing in favor. In the times of our fathers, says the Christian Register, they perched their meeting-houses on the tops of the hills, and made them like lanterns in a bold and generous scorn of any possible window-tax that might be imposed, being particularly careful to have a good wide window or two at the pulpit end of the church. All this is changed now. The light of heaven is shut out as if it were lurid beams from another source. Pulpit windows are pretty much obsolete as to the new churches, and in the old ones they are carefully closed by blinds, or some heavy exemplifications of our favorite "worship of God by upholstery." Our laity must be growing weak in the eyes. They now darken the windows in front of them, those within the pulpit half of the church, and keep open only those behind them, near the door; so that the preacher suffers the double disadvantage of straining his eyes in darkness, and at the same time facing the light. No wonder they have to patronize the optician so generally. O that our affectionate hearers would favor us with a little light from above, a small skylight illumining just the central dot of the sermon. It would not incommode them, and might avert blindness from us. IRISH BALLADS.-A volume of Irish ballads has just been published in London. Mr. Hayes, the editor, has given about four hundred pieces, and the richness and variety of the collection will surprise many of our readers. Almost all the ballads are the productions of cotemporary or of recent writers, although many of them relate to old Celtic periods of the island's history, as in the translations of Mangan from early Irish minstrelsy. Excepting the abundant use of Celtic proper names, and the occasional occurrence of vernacular words and phrases, the ballads are in their language altogether modern and English. Some of the best of the ballads are anonymous; those with the signature of "Mary" are as remarkable for their literary merit as they are pleasing for their plaintive tenderness and warm feeling. Here is one of these, entitled "Do you think I would reproach you with the sorrows that I bore? Sure the sorrow is all over, now I have you here once more "WELCOME HOME TO YOU. "A hundred thousand welcomes, and 'tis time for to come you From the far land of the foreigner, to your country and your home. THE TRUE WOMAN.-The following pretty O! long as we are parted, ever since you went away, I never pass'd a dreamless night or knew an easy day. picture of the duties of the true woman, from the pen of Dickens, we commend to the careful consideration of fast young ladies, who sneer at religion, eschew the petticoat, hate little children, pant for legislative honors, and look on fond mothers and faithful wives with horror, as creatures unsuited for this progressive age: And there's nothing but the gladness and the love within my heart, And the hope, so sweet and certain, that again we'll never part. A SYRIAN SALE.-An English traveler, Mr. Wortabet, who has been traveling for the past few years in the East, has written a very interesting work, entitled Syria and the Syrians, in which we find the following: "You'll never part me, darling-there's a promise in And if death but kindly lead me to the blessed home What a hundred thousand welcomes shall await you in the sky!" the merchant; he is accompanied by a broker. The "A shopkeeper comes to buy a bale of goods from merchant, understanding the object of their visit, invites them, with all the compliments of the East, to be seated, and dispatches his servant to fetch them pipes and coffee from a neighboring cafe, (these are found in every street.) See the broker now approach the merchant and whisper to him-they whispertheir faces serving as an index to what is going on between them. The broker now returns to the shopkeeper, and whispers to him, as he did to the merchant; he goes and comes between them till he has brought them near to each other's mark. All this time not an audible word is uttered, and looking upon the merchant and the shopkeeper, you would suppose they were bent upon out-smoking each other. Having come near to the point, the broker drags the shopkeeper to the merchant, and, nolens volens, links their hands in each other's grasp; he, at the same time, holding their hands within his own, lest they should be separated, in which case the sale is supposed not to be legal. He now calls upon the merchant to make the sale, or, as in the Arabic, to make the sale a blessing to the purchaser, at twenty piasters the piece. 'No!' grunts the merchant. He wants twenty-one piasters, and draws his hand back in token that he will not sell at that price. The ever-ready broker joins them again, whispers something to both, and finally screams aloud, Cut the difference, and let the price be twenty piasters and a half. This being agreed to, the broker again calls upon the merchant to make the sale. This he does in this wise: while the hands of merchant and shopkeeper are grasped the broker utters the finale, 'Ala una; here he stops to breathe. 'ALA DUE; here he coughs. 'ALA TRE;' here he stops, and the sale is made by a silent but hearty shake of the hand." "The true woman, for whose ambition a husband's love and her children's adoration are sufficient, who applies her military instincts to the discipline of her household, and whose legislative abilities exercise themselves in making laws for her house; whose intellect has field enough for her in communion with her husband, and whose heart asks no other honors than his love and admiration; a woman who does not think it a weakness to attend to her toilet, and who does not disdain to be beautiful; who believes in the virtue of glossy hair and well-fitting gowns, and who eschews rents and raveled edges, slip-shod shoes, and audacious make-ups; a woman who speaks low, and does not speak much; who is patient and gentle, intellectual, and industrious; who loves more than she reasons, and yet does not love blindly; who never scolds and rarely argues, but adjusts with a simile; such a woman is the wife we have all dreamed of once in our lives, and is the mother we still worship in the backward distance of the past." PLACE FOR OLD WOMEN.-Very few of the judges of the inferior courts in early colonial times were learned in the law, or in anything else, as to that matter, except politics, and hence did not always inspire respect. Mr. Ruggles, generally known in Massachusetts as the "Brigadier," in consequence of his services at Crown Point and Lake George, was born in Rochester, Mass., and commenced practice in his native town about 1735. He was a very able lawyer, but somewhat rough and uncouth in his manners. He was one day trying a case at Plymouth, and a very aged woman was on the stand as a witness. Being feeble, she asked Mr. Ruggles if she could not sit down. He told her "Yes," and seeing no other convenient place, motioned to her to take a seat on the bench with the judges. She accordingly went hobbling up to where the judges were, and they asked her who sent her there. She said Mr. Ruggles. The court then turned to Mr. Ruggles, and inquired what he meant by sending her there. "Why," said he, "I beg your honors' pardon, but really, I-I thought it was a place made for old women." FINE PREACHING.-The curse of the age is fine preaching; it is morbid and pestilential. The want of the age is plain, intelligent preaching preaching suggestive and illustrative preaching absorbing all that eloquence can offer, but eloquence adapting itself (without which it ceases to be eloquence) to the wants and states of the people, availing itself of the lights of history for illustration, or of science for confirmation, or of philology for elucidation, and holding all so aloft that they may reflect their rays upon the genius of Christianity, and develop its superior luster, adaptability, and power. To attempt to say fine things in the pulpit is a solemn sin; and fine sermons (like all other finery) are very evanescent in their influence. Let the fine-sermon system die out as soon as possible, "Tela fuit simplex statuens decus addere telæ Fecit hymen geminam puroque intexuit auro." Which was thus Englished by the author himself: "Single no more, a double Webb behold; Hymen embroider'd it with virgin Gould." ass. TURNING THE TABLES. A professional gentleman of our acquaintance has hanging in his room a fine, large, colored engraving of the head of a quadruped, vulgarly known as a jackNot long since a friend dropped in, and stopped before the picture, gazing intently upon it for a few moments, and then sung out abruptly, as he thought very wittily, "Halloo, doctor, is that your portrait ?" "O, no," replied the doctor, coolly, "that's simply a looking glass." O JERUSALEM!-The number of Jews in the great cities of the world is thus stated: NewYork, 12,000; Philadelphia, 2,500; Baltimore, 1,800; Charleston, 1,500; London, 120,000; Amsterdam, 25,000; Hamburgh, 9,000; Berlin, 5,000; Cracow, 20,000; Warsaw, 30,000; Rome, 6,000; Leghorn, 10,000; Constantinople, 80,000; Smyrna, 9,000; Jerusalem, 6,000; Hebron, 800. MALOUN, physician to the Queen of France, was so fond of drugging, that it is told of him that once, having a most patient patient, who diligently and punctually swallowed all the stuffs he ordered, he was so delighted in seeing all the vials and pill-boxes cleaned out, that he shook him by the hand, exclaiming, "My dear sir, it really affords me pleasure to attend you, and you deserve to be ill." DOG WHIPPERS.-A clerical correspondent of Notes and Queries says: "The office of dog-whipper is not extinct, though the necessity for its exercise may no longer exist. Dog-whipping, 2s. 6d.,' still forms a regular item in the annual accounts of the sexton of the Collegiate Church of Middleham, and is no less regularly paid. A GERMAN MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.-A certain Wislicenus, a native of Halle, Germany, who emigrated to this country some time ago, and at present resides in New-Jersey, has written the following Jeremiade to his friends in Europe, which we translate from the Trieste Zietung : "I remain near the coast, having no desire to penetrate into the interior, but, on the contrary, cleave to the ocean that laves Europe's shores; for that is still our home, while this is the land of the stranger. I came here possessed of no illusions, and yet found it worse than I anticipated. Human progress is here in its infancy. I find nothing but a republican Russiabarbarism in every point of view-real humanity confined to a select few, who bear the cross." Book Notices. The Elements of Natural Philosophy, copiously Illustrated by familiar Experiments, and containing Descriptions of Instruments, with Directions for Using. Designed for the use of Schools and Academies. By A. W. Sprague, A. M. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.) In no department of literature is the hand of improvement more visible than in the preparation of elementary treatises for the use of students, and this volume, on the interesting subject of natural philosophy, is a decided advance upon all preceding publications with which we are acquainted. Mr. Sprague, proceeding upon the acknowledged fact that the principles of natural science are most readily comprehended by visible illustrations, has embellished his book with two hundred and eighty engravings, which greatly enhance its value, and will facilitate the labors of the student. The explanations are written in a clear and intelligible style, and the work is creditable to American scholarship. Stevenson & Owen have published, at the book establishment of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, an edition of Edgar's Variations of Popery, in one octavo volume of six hundred pages. It is a work too well known and appreciated to need an introduction to that portion of our readers who have leisure for polemical theology. It is precisely what the author intended it to be, an unmitigated and unrelenting exposure of anti-Christian abominations. The present edition is carefully printed from the latest corrections of the author. to afford not only amusement in the perusal, but instruction relative to men and manners in that most interesting era, the first half of the eighteenth entur Independently of her literary merits, Lady Montague deserves to be gratefully remembered as having been the first, amid opposition, ridicule, and persecution, to introduce into England the practice of vaccination as a preventive of that terrible scourge, the small-pox. She died in 1762, in the seventythird year of her age. Hood's Poetical Works.-A second volume of the mirth-provoking rhymes of poor Tom Hood has been published by Phillips, Sampson & Co. It is the seventh in the series issued by these enterprising publishers-a series which is intended to cover the whole field of British poetry. The editorial supervision has been intrusted to Epes Sargent, Esq., who has thus far performed his task with taste and good judgment. The series already embraces Campbell, Rogers, Coleridge, Collins, Gray, Goldsmith-the last three in one volume-and Hood. Brief, but reliable biographical sketches are prefixed to each author, and Mr. Sargent has succeeded in making these editions more perfect than any which have appeared in Great Britain. More than fifty of Campbell's shorter poems are now, for the first time, included in a volume bearing his name; and Goldsmith's poems are enriched by a new discovery of a translation from the Italian of Vida, entitled "The Game of Chess." We are not sure that the editor, in his zeal for before us, some poetry that is not Hood's; but completeness, has not given, in the volume there is so much gleaned from various sources, that no one else could have written, that we wonder how it could have been omitted from former collections. The thanks of the commu are due to the publishers for this neat and exceedingly low-priced edition of the British poets. They are sold at one dollar a volume. Lectures on the Life, Genius, and Insanity of Cowper. By George B. Cheever. Carter & Brothers publish these lectures in a duodecimo of about four hundred pages, with several appropriate wood engravings. As to the life of the poet, it is pretty well known from his pub-nity lished letters and his autobiography. Of his genius the public long since formed a correct estimate. It is upon his insanity more especially that our author dwells, aiming, very successfully, as we think, to remove the injustice done to the memory of the poet by the graceful pen of Southey, who treated Cowper pretty much as he did John Wesley. In fact, the laureate had very erroneous ideas of personal religion, and is aptly likened to Dante's guide, who was quite at home in purgatory, and could bravely lead the way through hell, but was totally unacquainted with the realms of the blessed and the path thitherward. Dr. Cheever's style is sprightly and vigorous, and the preparation of these lectures, evidently a labor of love, evinces patient research and truth-seeking earnestness. The Astrologer of Chaldea; or, the Life of Faith, is the title of an interesting volume, blending the charm of imagination with the facts of the Bible relative to the family of the patriarch Abraham. It is from the pen of W. P. Strickland, D. D. Reginald Heber is a name suggestive of everything pure and of good report. A scholar and a poet, a Christian, a missionary, and a bishop, his life, brief as it was, is full of interest, and its record is a precious legacy to the universal Church of Christ. The memoirs published by his widow, soon after his death, contained a great deal of irrelevant matter, filling two large octavo volumes, which, we believe, are now out of print. An abridgment, prepared by a clergyman, who withholds his name, has been issued, in a style of peculiar neatness, from the press of Jewett & Company. It is a duodecimo, of The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague make up the second volume of "The Library of Standard Letters," edited by Mrs. S. J. Hale, and published by Mason & Brothers. The editor (editress is an uncouth barbarism) has prefixed to the volume an appreciative and gracefully-three hundred and fifty pages, contains everywritten memoir of this charming letter-writer, thing essential to the biography, and is enriched who justly ranks in the first class of learned with several specimens of the bishop's poetry, women. Her letters have been frequently pub- which had no place in the original memoirs. lished and are here so classified and arranged as A few verses, which we copy, evince the versa "At length spoke the lass, 'twixt a smile and a tear: "The weather is cold for a watery bier; When summer returns we may easily die; Till then let us sorrow in company." Pioneers of the West. By W. P. Strickland. Full of romantic interest growing out of truthful narratives relative to the earlier settlement of the great West; we have seldom met with a more attractive volume. Hair-breadth escapes, disasters, sufferings, and successes, are depicted in a style vivid and picturesque. The publishers (Messrs. Carlton & Phillips) have done themselves credit by presenting this volume in a style worthy of the work. The embellishments are appropriate, and the typography faultless. We should like to quote largely, but our space allows but a short extract. It is from the chapter entitled Family," which consisted of himself, wife, and "The Squatter three children. They lived in a secluded hut on the banks of the Illinois River: "One day there came to the squatter's cabin three Indians, professing to be friendly, who invited him to go out on a hunting excursion with them. As the family subsisted mostly upon game, he finally concluded to accompany them, taking with him his eldest son. They expected to be absent about a week, as they intended to take a somewhat extensive range. After three days had passed away, one of the Indians returned to the squatter's house, and deliberately lighting his pipe and taking his seat by the fire, he commenced smoking in silence. The wife was not startled at his appearance, as it was frequently the case that one, and sometimes more, of a party of Indian hunters, getting discouraged, would leave the rest and return. This was usually the case when they imagined they discovered some bad sign, and it would not only be useless, but disastrous, for them to hunt under such circumstances. "The Indian sat for some time in sullen silence, and at length, removing his pipe from his mouth, he gave a significant grunt to awaken attention, and said, 'White man die.' The squatter's wife at this replied, "What is the matter?" "He sick, tree fall on him, he die. You go see him.' "Her suspicions being somewhat aroused at the manner of the savage, she asked him a number of questions. The evasiveness and evident want of consistency in the answers, at length convinced her that something was wrong. She judged it best not to go herself, but sent her youngest son, the eldest, as we have seen, having gone on the hunt with his father. Night came, but it brought not the son or the Indian. All its 567 gloomy hours were spent in that lone cabin by the look-out for the boy; the mother felt grieved that she mother and daughter; but morning came without their return. The whole day passed in the same fruitless had sent her child on the errand, but it was now too late. Her suspicions were now confirmed that the Indians had decoyed away her husband and sons. She felt that they would not stop in their evil designs, and that, if they had slain the father and his boys, they would next attack the mother and her daughter. "No time was to be lost; and she and her daughter, as night was approaching, went to work to barricade the door and windows of the cabin in the best manner they could. The rifle of the youngest boy was all the weapon in the house, as he did not take it when he went to seek his father. This was taken from its hangings, and carefully examined to see that it was well loaded and primed. To her daughter she gave the ax, and thus armed, they determined to watch all night, and, if attacked by the savages, to fight to the last. pecting to find the mother and daughter asleep, but in "About midnight they made their appearance, exthis they were disappointed. They approached stealthily, and one of the number knocked loudly at the door, crying, 'Mother! mother!' "The mother's ear was too acute to be deceived by the wily savage, and she replied, 'Where are the Indians, my son?' "The answer, 'Um gone,' would have satisfied her, if she had not been before aware of the deceit. "Come up, my son, and put your ear to the latchhole. I want to tell you something before I open the door.' "The Indian applied his ear to the latch-hole. The crack of the rifle followed, and he fell dead. "As soon as she fired, she stepped on one side of the door, and immediately two rifle balls passed through it, either of which would have killed her. daughter, there are but two. They are the three that "Thank God,' said the mother in a whisper to her went to hunt with your father, and one of them is dead. If we can only kill or cripple another, we shall be safe. Take courage, my child; God will not forsake us in this trying hour. We must both be still after they fire again. Supposing they have killed us, they will break down the door. I may be able to shoot another one,' for in the mean time she had re-loaded the rifle; but if I miss, you must use the ax with al your might.' "The daughter, equally courageous with her mother, assured her that she would do her best. "The conversation had scarcely ceased when two more rifle balls came crashing through the window. A death-like stillness ensued for the space of several minutes, when two more balls, in quick succession, came through the door, followed by tremendous strokes against it with a heavy stake. way, and an Indian, with a fiendish yell, was in the At length the door gave act of springing into the house; but a ball from the boy's rifle, in the mother's hand, pierced his heart, and he fell dead across the threshold. The surviving Indian, daring not to venture-and it was well for his skull that he did not-fired at random, and ran away. "Now,' said the mother to the daughter, we must leave; and taking the rifle and the ax, they hastened to the river, jumped into the canoe, and without a morsel of provision, except a wild duck, and two blackbirds which the mother shot on the voyage, and which they ate raw, they paddled their canoe down the river until they reached the residence of the French settlers at St. Louis." The Catholic. Letters addressed to a young Kinsman proposing to join the Church of Rome. By E. H. Derby. (Boston: Jewett & Co.) The writer is a lawyer, who has found time to turn his attention to the absurdities of the papal superstition, which in these letters he sets before his young friend, and exposes with logical acuteness. The volume is well calculated for the object for which it has been given to the public, and will produce the same result upon the mind of any candid reader, as it did upon the youth for whose special benefit the letters are said to the inclination to peruse more elaborate treathave been originally written. We commend the volume to those who have not the time or ises upon the same subject. |