cious love of money,-fattens our grudges, in spite of its excessive bad taste. No doubt it would be wiser and more Christian-like for him and for us to overlook the faults of our adversaries, but we fear that the degree of exalted humanity needful to such lenience is not readily found. But in one respect, it seems to us, he greatly misrepresents his own country, in reference to the feelings of subservience which Americans cherish towards the opinions and example of England. There may be such a feeling among the persons with whom Mr. Ward associates, but we do not believe that it exists elsewhere, certainly not to the extent which he describes. Matt's is one of the most virulent cases of Anglo-phobia that we remember to have seen; and he makes a very common mistake in imagining. that to be American he must, of necessity, be unEnglish. His facts are generally reliable, but his inferences are as often wrong as right; he is vehement in his abuse, gross in his descriptions, often too much so to be read aloud in tolerably decent company, partial, prejudiced, ungenerous, and sometimes ungrammatical. But he is always lively and readable, and, if not instructive, he is, at least, amusing. In his chapter on English dining all that he says against John Bull's feeding might, with just as much truth, if not more, be urged against us Americans. But the most terrible phial of Matt's wrath is emptied upon the Church of England, and we should infer from the nature of his remarks on the hierarchy that he is not a "professor." His anxiety to give the worst aspect possible of the Anglican church, leads him into the error of stating that there are but half a million of Protestants in Ireland, which is very wide of the truth, according to the latest reliable publications on that subject. The best way of showing up John Bull is not to abuse him, but to excel him in the arts which have given him his status among the people of the earth. If Mr. Ward had written a better book than any of the Englishmen he runs his head against, he would have done more to damage their reputations than he could possibly do by fifty such books as his English Items, even though they were fifty times as abusive.

It is an absurd thing for us Yankees, to rail at England, while we make ourselves dependent upon her for the greater part of our intellectual enjoyment. If John Bull be the great bloated, dull, grasping, beef-fed, church-ridden, guzzling old dotard, that Matt Ward, and others of our writers, tell us, in the name of consistency, why not let go his skirts, and try to get along without his assistance? We use VOL. I.-22

all his literary performances, refuse to offer him any recompense for them, on the avowed ground that we cannot get along without them, and then turn round and call him dunce, dotard, and flunkey, while our actions confess him our superior. Frenchmen may call John Bull perfidious with some reason, for they do not rob him of his works, but, for us to do so, while we voluntarily submit to his mental government, is in the last degree, absurd and nonsensical.

-Fun and Earnest is the title of a new volume of essays by the Author of Musings of an Invalid, which has just been published by John S. Taylor. It might have been called, with as much propriety, Fun in Earnest, as there is a good deal of earnestness in the author's fun. The essays are neither brilliantly written nor profoundly original in thought and sentiment, but they are well-intentioned, and possess a certain quiantness of humor that make them readable, even to those literary epicures who are accustomed to feed only on the daintiest productions of the daintiest writers. The fun of the book is contained in a humorous attempt to anticipate the contents of a newspaper a hundred years hence, wherein the author displays considerable imaginative power. and a vein of sarcastic wit.

-The Deck of the Crescent City, just issued by G. P. PUTNAM & Co., is the inappropriate title of a rather worthless book, with an absurd dedication to Mr. Richard H. Dana, who will be astonished to find how obscure he is. It has nothing to recommend it, that we have been able to discover.

-A new work by HAWTHORNE! HOW could we say that the month was sterile of literary materials, when we have such an announcement under our pen? We are tempted to recall the expression; for a new book by such a writer, if the only one of the season, would redeem the want of any other. The Tanglewood Papers is the name of the expected pleasure, an admirably suggestive name, and we feel ourselves already under the weird spell of our oriental magician.

-Adventures in Fairy Land by STODDARD, are also among the promises that excite an agreeable anticipatory smack.

-A tale by Miss MCINTOSH, which de-picts the difference of manner and opinion, at the North and South, with some felicity, has just been published under the title of the Lofty and the Lowly, or, Good in All, and none All Good. might seem from the title and the subject, to have been suggested by the everlasting Uncle Tom; but we find on reading it.

It

that it deals with the white classes mainly, leaving the blacks to come in, only now and then, as proper to complete the picture. The purpose of the amiable author, is a commendable one, by faithful representations of the merits and defects of society, both at the North and South, to remove unworthy prejudices, and promote a good understanding. The reader is made to travel briskly, therefore, from Georgia to Massachusetts, and back again to the Virginia Springs, perhaps too briskly to get a perfect knowledge of the people he meets. The scenes, however, are all the livelier for the rapid change.

-It is curious that the only one of our poets, belonging to the most peaceful of sects, the Quakers or Friends, should be our only modern Tyrteus. Mr. Halleck, who has so much of the old-world chivalry in his veins, laughs away his quarrels with mankind, in travesty and wit; Mr. Bryant, the stern uncompromising democrat, whose editorial pen is tipped with the sharpest steel, softens down, as the poet, into tender and tranquil aspirations; Mr. Longfellow, who might hold his own in the very roughand-tumble of life, is saint-like, and hopeful, amid the bayonets of Springfield; but Whittier, the Quaker, and non-resistant: who reads his poetry without feeling that The should like to step out and fight somebody or something? Not that he, too, is not gentle, loving, full of tears, as a man -of genius must ever be; but that under his sweet, sad smiles, there is such a volcano of fire, of the old genuine ire, wrath, indignation, ever surging and bursting into flame. Like Carlyle's friend, Rumday, he has heat enough in his stomach to consume the world. Yet, his last little volume, just issued, The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems, there is less of the defiant martial ardor which swelled

through his earlier works. In the place of it, there is more of their serene, sympathetic, humanitary, and devout feeling. It would seem as if the blaze of his meridian, were mellowed and tempered into genial warmth, as he drew nearer to the natural term of life. We wish that we had space to quote here, his "Questions of Life, or a Prisoner of Naples," but we cannot.

-We can speak more warmly of a second work on Spain, by MR. WALLIS, than we did of his Glimpses a few years since. The volume now issued is the fruit of a second visit to that beautiful and romantic land. It is written with great sprightliness, and generally in admirable taste, giving a faithful view of the manners and customs of the Spaniards, and complete as well as accurate descriptions of their political condition, and the administration of the government. Mr.

Wallis has a pleasant way of telling his story, and he who begins at the first chapter, will scarcely desist from reading, until he has reached the last.

-A prospectus of a work on the Types of Mankind, which will embrace ethnological researches, founded upon ancient monuments, sculptures, paintings, skulls of races, as well as upon their geographical, philosophical, and biblical history, has been put forth by Dr. Nott, of Mobile, and George Gliddon, of Egyptian memory. It will contain the results of Mr. Gliddon's Eastern explorations, besides the fruits of the labors of Dr. Morton and Nott, in the field of Cranial observation, &c. We have no doubt that it will be a book of great utility.

-The Curse of Clifton, by Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth, is a ponderous American novel, just published by Hart, of Philadelphia. The opening of the first chapter is an ingenious variation of the well-known method of Mr. G. P. R. James, in commencing his romances. Instead of the two horsemen who might have been seen, &c., Mrs. Southworth says: "Upon a glorious morning, in the midsummer of 18-, two equestrian travellers spurred their horses up the ascent of the Eagle's Flight, the loftiest and most perilous pass of the Alleghanies," &c.

-The Miseries of Human Life form a strange theme for fun, but they are the staple of a small volume just published by Putnam & Co., intended rather to make readers laugh than weep. But, they are the small miseries of human life, which are held up for mirth, and not the larger ones. Misery, however, is misery, whether little or great, and though we may laugh at other people's, we never laugh at our own; if we could, they would cease to be miseries. The author, or editor, in his humorous preface, has given no indication, as should have been done, of the origin of the book; and, beyond the subtitle, An old Friend in a New Dress, it appears as an original publication, which it is not. But the reader will soon make this discovery for himself, from the antiquity of the jokes, and the general costume of the dialogue. Sensitive and Testy are two friends who carry on a dialogue, in which they strive to entertain each other by their distresses, or distress each other by their puns; and in this manner they go through the one hundred and eighty-two pages, occasionally relieving the reader, who is supposed to be a listener, by the exhibition of pictorial pun. The jokes are so long drawn out, that we imagine the book must have been projected before the great discovery was made, that brevity is the soul of wit. But we will not dis

miss the Miseries of Human Life without permitting our reader to see, for himself, what it is like. Here is an average specimen of the humor.

Ned Tes. "Libitur et labetur!"-Slipping and slopping.

9. Feeling your foot slidder over the back of a toad, which you took for a stepping-stone, in your dark evening walk.

10. Making an involuntary acquisition, in the shape of a snowball in winter, or a bit of something sticky in summer, which sticks to your sole as the devil might if he got hold of it.

Sen. I don't mind that, if it relieves me of itself all at once. It is so satisfactory to set your foot down free on the ground again, after the incumbrance is gone. But what a trial it is to a nervous man to go scraping along over the stones, and making his blood run cold, so long that he can scarcely tell when the last bit departs! His imagination feels as if it were there, when the eye can detect nothing on the boot, painfully upturned for inspection while the owner balances himself on the other leg-tottering like a ninepin.

Tes. After your "something sticky" has seemingly disappeared

11. To enter a drawing-room and find out, when too late, that your boot has changed its manner of annoyance from sticking, to-smelling unpleasantly!

12. Or, on the other hand, to step on a bit of fresh orange or melon peel, upon which your foot flies off incontinently in a lateral direction, much to the perturbation of your centre of gravity.

Ned Tes. And the gravity of the passersby as well.

13. To have these misfortunes happen when you are in a great hurry and going along with all your might.

Tes. Bad enough, sir, bad enough; but this, and all the specimens of bad footing we have yet mentioned, are carpeting compared with what follows, as you'll soon confess:

14. While you are out with a walking party, after heavy rains-one shoe suddenly sucked off by the boggy clay; and then, in making a long and desperate stretch, which fails, with the hope of recovering it, leaving the other in the same predicament! The second stage of ruin is that of standing-or rather tottering-in blank despair, with both feet planted, ankle-deep, in the quagmire! The last (I had almost said the dying) scene of the tragedy-that of deliberately cramming first one, and then the other clogged, polluted foot into its choked-up shoe, after having scavengered your hands and gloves in slaving to drag up each separately out of its deep bed, and in this state proceeding on your walk-is too dreadful for representation.

There are worse books than this for a pocket companion in a rail-road car, but we have no doubt that the author of it discovered, if the reader of it should not, that one of the greatest miseries of human life is the labor of making a book of small jokes.

-The Obligation of the Sabbath is the title of a volume in which the two sides of the Sabbatarian question are thoroughly discussed by Rev. J. Newton Brown, and W. B. Taylor, of Philadelphia; but the publication being by Mr. Brown,

the force of the argument naturally enough remains on his side. If we were disposed to make ourselves a party to the discussion, this would not be the place to enter upon it. The book is published by Hart of Philadelphia.

-Our literature has lost one of its ornaments during the last month, in the death of Rev. SAMUEL JUDD, the author of Margaret, Richard Edney, and Philo. As a novel of New England life, Margaret was remarkable for its truth, nature, and grace. There were passages, descriptive of character and scenery, which have never been surpassed by any of our writers of fiction, for their fidelity and picturesqueness. But the fault of Mr.

Judd, especially in Richard Edney, was a wearisome minuteness of detail. He strove to describe men and things so accurately, that he became tedious; he sacrificed effect to exactness; and when he ought to have been impulsive and eloquent, he was precise and dry. His Philo, we believe, was generally considered a failure.

-The Works of Sir William Hamilton, in the press of the Harpers, will be the most valuable addition made to our philosophical literature in many years. They contain the ablest papers on the various questions of mental philosophy, that have appeared since the death of Dugald Stewart; and many of them, indeed, are superior to the best writings, not only of that speculator, but of all the rest of the Scottish School. But the "Works" are not confined to metaphysical criticism, containing besides, elaborate essays on important questions of education and University discipline.

-The same publishers announce a complete edition, in seven volumes, of the writings of COLERIDGE, with an introductory essay on his Philosophical and Theological Opinions, by Professor SHEDD, who is to be the editor. There are so many readers of Coleridge, in this country, that this publication will be very acceptable. His "Aids to Reflection," his "Poetry," and his "Table-Talk," have been separately issued here, but no complete and uniform edition of all his works. Coleridge was, perhaps, the most unequal writer that ever lived, and yet there is not one of his essays, scarcely a scrap of his conversations, which does not contain suggestive and interesting thought. young minds, they are the most fascinating literature that can be taken up, partly because of the genuine impulse and life in them, but mainly, on account of the magnificent promises which constantly lead you on, from one step to another, through a bewildering but seductive maze

For

of fine conceits. It is true, that you seldom come to any end, but the journey itself is so delightful.

-Speeches by the Right Honorable THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, is the title of an American book, though of English parentage. It is the only advantage of our piratical no-foreign copy-right system, that the publishers will do for great authors, what their engagements or laziness will not suffer them to do for themselves, gather up their fragments and publish them in a collected form. It is doubtful, now that Macaulay is in Parliament once more, and with the more interesting researches and labors of his history on hand, whether he would ever take the trouble to edit the speeches scattered through the Standard and the Times. Mr. Redfield, therefore, has done a good thing in commissioning somebody to discharge the duty for him, we presume, with his approbation. A rich magazine of eloquence is the result,-for Macaulay displays the same splendid rhetorical powers, the same miraculous fertility, and the same liberal tone of thought in his essays, his histories, and his orations. He is equally

brilliant in all.

-We have read with great satisfaction the fine compliment which DE QUINCEY pays to the first publishers of his collected writings, Messrs. Ticknor, Reid and Fields, of Boston. In a letter to Mr. Fields-who having a blazon of the author as well as of the publisher, in his quarterings, knows how to do justice to both,-the opiumeater speaks gratefully of the liberal allowance they make him on the sale of his works. We are sure that such thanks will be a sweeter solace to the publishers than any amount of iniquitable profit that they might have made out of all the writers in the world.

The twelve volumes which Mr. Field has gathered out of the miscellaneous writings of De Quincey, will exhibit him in a new light to a large number of readers -and yet again, not in a new light. Every tolerably well informed man knew of him as the author of the Opium Eater, but few as the author of so much varied and excellent criticism; but we doubt whether this large knowledge will increase the estimation in which he was held. We doubt it, not because the writings thus revealed are unequal to the Confessions, -for they are on the same high level both of thought and execution, but because the characteristics of the Confessions were so clear, so positively brought out, so decisive of the powers of the author, that nothing that he might afterwards do could alter or raise our opinion of his ability. The nice criticism,

verbal and rhetorical, the masterly use of nervous idiomatic and robust English-the discursive yet always manageable and compact style-the intense passion-the profound imagination-in short, the poetry and the philosophy linked hand in hand with a fine intellectual (not always genial) humor, which appear in these subsequent Reminiscences, Narrative Papers, Historical Essays, and Sketches of Life and Manners, were all suggested by the brief hundred pages of the Opiumatic disclosures, and do not surprise us. We say to ourselves, as we read, They are precisely what we expected from that reserved power so strongly indicated all through the subject book. A strong man, who is master of himself, is always strong, and in what direction soever he shows his strength, we have no fear of the result. In this respect De Quincey differs especially from Coleridge, whose prose writings were an endless series of digressions,"five thousand chapters, as Lamb said, on the Transcendental Philosophy, all in an unfinished state," and who, if he proposed to carry you from London to Liverpool, would carry you by the way of Athens, Calcutta, Japan, California, NewYork, and Paris, and after all never reach his destination. De Quincey listens and digresses, too, whenever some rich prospect allures, or some difficulty is to be surmounted, but you have a pleasant jaunt of it, and reach the inn in time for

supper.

He

ENGLISH.-The Shakspearean circles in England have been greatly excited by a new discovery of Mr. J. Payne Collier, the famous annotator of the great bard. had the luck, in the year 1849, to stumble upon a dirty and tattered copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare printed in 1623; but it proved to be so worn that he threw it aside in disgust. But, on taking it up three years afterwards, he was induced to believe, from certain emendations of the text, noted in the margin, that it was some old actor's copy, which had been used, probably, near the time of its publication. It was scribbled all over with prompter's marks, stage directions, erasures of passages omitted in the representation, &c., many of which, of themselves, throw light upon portions heretofore obscure; but, what was of far more importance, it was found that, from beginning to end, the text also had been corrected in every conceivable way-the sense disclosed by proper punctuation, wrong words substituted by right ones, dropped phrases replaced, and even, in some instances, whole lines restored-most essential ones-which were never dreamed

of by commentators, because never seen before in any printed copy of the works of Shakspeare. "I discovered," says Mr. Collier, "that there was hardly a page which did not present, in a handwriting of the time, some emendations in the pointing, or in the text; while on most of them they were frequent, and on many numerous." The total number of these corrections he found to be not less than twenty thousand. They were obviously made by some one (Thomas Perkins is the written name of the owner of the book, probably a brother of Richard Perkins, a distinguished actor of the day), who had access to sources of information never given to the public,-we may suppose the authentic manuscript copies preserved in the theatre, which Shakspeare had himself once directed. Some specimens of these corrections Mr. Collier laid before the world, about a year ago, in the London Athenæum. We find, from a notice in a recent number of the same journal, that he has just issued a supplemental volume to his well-known edition of the poet's works, entitled "Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakspeare's Plays, from Early Manuscript Corrections in a copy of the Folio, 1632," &c. &c., in which these corrections, or such of them as had not been anticipated by the ingenuity of annotators, make their final appearance. Their number and value may be inferred from the account given by the Athenæum, which states that " we have here, in all probability, a genuine restoration of Shakspeare's language, in at least a thousand places in which he has been hitherto misunderstood."

This is one of the strangest and most curious events in literary history. Many of the acutest intellects of the world have been busy, for nearly a century, in trying to correct the obvious errors of Shakspeare's text, with only an indifferent success, and now an old actor's copy turns up to cast light upon the obscurity, and make that consistently beautiful, which was before blemished and deformed. It gives us pleasure to see that REDFIELD & Co. announce a republication of Mr. Collier's volume.

-A History of the Colonial Policy of the British Empire, from 1717 to 1851, by LORD GRAY, is among the forthcoming works, and also the Life and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, by LORD JOHN RUSSELL. The latter ought to be a book of great general interest, for Fox was so intimately connected with the most important events of one of the most important eras in British history, while his private character was so general and his relations to men so numerous,

that his letters must be unusually agreeable.

-A novel by the author of Mary Barton, called Ruth, may be chronicled as among the successes of the day. It is the history of a young female, who was betrayed into a misadventure in early life, and subsequently taken into the family of a benevolent clergyman, with a view to restoring her to her lost position in society. The incidents are well decribed, and the characters discriminated with great nicety. The work has been republished in Boston.

-It has been very much the fashion in England for some years, to rake up the literary remains of distinguished men, and give them to the public. We should think, from the announcements, that the tendency is spreading. We have already referred to the proposed edition of Fox. The fifth volume of Chesterfield's letters are just out; and we see besides, that two volumes of the letters of the Poet Gray, the papers of Sir Hudson Lowe, and the papers of Castlereagh, relating to the Congress of Vienna, the Battle of Waterloo, and the occupation of Paris, are in press.

The Athenæum, alluding to the numerous works, by titled authors, which are in preparation, and the lectures delivered by noble lords to the Mechanics' Institute, remarks pithily: "All this is an expression of the immediate age in which we are living even more remarkable and important perhaps than-though by no means unconnected with-its scientific triumphs. The 'good old English gentleman' looks like a ghost in the morning lights of the time. Contrary to long cherished and highly respectable theories, too, maintained by traditional saws and watered by elderly gentlemen's tears, no dangerous symptoms have yet ensued. A perception of the community of the intellectual faculties is the new birth of the present century, and society is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances."

-The article in the last North British Review on Uncle Tom, is ascribed to ARCHBISHOP WHATELY, and the series of papers, relating to the same book, which appeared in the London Standard, have been collected by the writer, CHIEF JUSTICE DENMAN, and published in a pamphlet, with a dedication to Mrs. Stowe.

-Mr. G. S. FABER, is a writer who has long had the prophecies of the Bible under his particular charge, and now a new work of his, called The revival of the French Emperorship anticipated from the necessity of Prophecy, undertakes to show that Napoleon the First was the