(as is usual), but by drawing them out as long as possible, nearly closing her eyes the while,-imagine all this, and we have both the woman and the authoress before us.

JAMES LAWSON

Mr. Lawson has published, I believe, only Giordano, a tragedy, and two volumes entitled Tales and Sketches by a Cosmopolite. The former was condemned (to use a gentle word) some years ago at the Park Theatre; and never was condemnation more religiously deserved. The latter are in so much more tolerable than the former, that they contain one non-execrable thing, The Dapper Gentleman's Story, in manner, as in title, an imitation of one of Irving's Tales of a Traveller.

I mention Mr. L., however, not on account of his literary labors, but because, although a Scotchman, he has always professed to have greatly at heart the welfare of American letters. He is much in the society of authors and booksellers, converses fluently, tells a good story, is of social habits, and, with no taste whatever, is quite enthusiastic on all topics appertaining to taste.

CAROLINE M. KIRKLAND

Mrs. Kirkland's New Home, published under the nom de plume of "Mary Clavers," wrought an undoubted sensation. The cause lay not so much in

picturesque description, in racy humor, or in animated individual portraiture, as in truth and novelty. The West at the time was a field comparatively untrodden by the sketcher or the novelist. In certain works, to be sure, we had obtained brief glimpses of character strange to us sojourners in the civilized East, but to Mrs. Kirkland alone we were indebted for our acquaintance with the home and home-life of the backwoodsman. With a fidelity and vigor that prove her pictures to be taken from the very life, she has represented 66 scenes " that could have occurred only as and where she has described them. She has placed before us the veritable settlers of the forest, with all their peculiarities, national and individual,-their free and fearless spirit; their homely utilitarian views; their shrewd out-looking for self-interest; their thrifty care and inventions multiform; their coarseness of manner, united with real delicacy and substantial kindness when their sympathies are called into action,-in a word, with all the characteristics of the Yankee, in a region where the salient points of character are unsmoothed by contact with society. So lifelike were her representations that they have been appropriated as individual portraits by many who have been disposed to plead, trumpet-tongued, against what they supposed to be "the deep damnation of their takingoff."

Forest Life succeeded A New Home, and was read

with equal interest. It gives us, perhaps, more of the philosophy of Western life, but has the same freshness, freedom, piquancy. Of course, a truthful picture of pioneer habits could never be given in any grave history or essay so well as in the form of narration, where each character is permitted to develop itself; narration, therefore, was very properly adopted by Mrs. Kirkland in both the books just mentioned, and even more entirely in her later volume, Western Clearings. This is the title of a collection of tales, illustrative, in general, of Western manners, customs, ideas. The Land Fever is a story of the wild days when the madness of speculation in land was at its height. It is a richly characteristic sketch, as is also The Ball at Thram's Huddle. Only those who have had the fortune to visit or live in the "back settlements" can enjoy such pictures to the full. Chances and Changes and Love vs. Aristocracy are more regularly constructed tales, with the "universal passion" as the moving power, but colored with the glowing hues of the West. The Bee Tree exhibits a striking but too numerous class among the settlers, and explains, also, the depth of the bitterness that grows out of an unprosperous condition in that "Paradise of the Poor." Ambuscades and Half Lengths from Life I remember as two piquant sketches to which an annual, a year or two ago, was indebted for a most unusual sale among the conscious and pendreading denizens of the West. Half-Lengths turns on

the trying subject of caste. The Schoolmaster's Prog ress is full of truth and humor. The Western pedagogue, the stiff, solitary, nondescript figure in the drama of a new settlement, occupying a middle position between "our folks" and "company," and "boarding round," is irresistibly amusing, and cannot fail to be recognized as the representative of a class. The occupation, indeed, always seems to mould those engaged in it; they all soon, like Master Horner, learn to "know well what belongs to the pedagogical character, and that facial solemnity stands high on the list of indispensable qualifications. The spelling-school, also, is a " new-country" feature which we owe Mrs. Kirkland many thanks for recording. The incidents of An Embroidered Fact are singular and picturesque, but not particularly illustrative of the Clearings. The same may be said of Bitter Fruits from Chance-Sown Seeds; but this abounds in capital touches of character; all the horrors of the tale are brought about through suspicion of pride, an accusation as destructive at the West as that of witchcraft in olden times, or the cry of "Mad dog" in modern.

In the way of absolute books, Mrs. Kirkland, I believe, has achieved nothing beyond the three volumes specified (with another lately issued by Wiley & Putnam), but she is a very constant contributor to the magazines. Unquestionably, she is one of our best writers, has a province of her own, and in that province

has few equals. Her most noticeable trait is a certain freshness of style, seemingly drawn, as her subjects in general, from the West. In the second place is to be observed a species of wit, approximating humor, and so interspersed with pure fun, that "wit," after all, is nothing like a definition of it. To give an example, Old Thoughts on the New Year commences with a quotation from Tasso's Aminta :

Il mondo invecchia

E invecchiando intristisce;

and the following is given as a "free translation":

The world is growing older
And wiser day by day;
Everybody knows beforehand

What you 're going to say.

We used to laugh and frolic—

Now we must behave:

Poor old Fun is dead and buried

Pride dug his grave.

This, if I am not mistaken, is the only specimen of poetry as yet given by Mrs. Kirkland to the world. She has afforded us no means of judging in respect to her inventive powers, although fancy, and even imagination, are apparent in everything she does. Her perceptive faculties enable her to describe with great verisimilitude. Her mere style is admirable, lucid, terse, full of variety, faultlessly pure, and yet bold,-so