THE CZAR, HIS COURT AND PEOPLE; INCLUDING A TOUR IN NORWAY AND SWEDEN: By John S. Maxwell. New York: Baker & Scribner. The writer of this book seems to us to have shown himself intelligent, observing, judicious, and impartial; and these surely are the most important requisites for an author of a book of travels. He has had many predecessors in the same route, who have chronicled their observations and adventures as he has done; but there is a freshness and good temper and point in what he has written that will, notwithstanding, deservedly secure to his work, a more than common share of public favor. ORLENDORFF'S NEW METHOD OF LEARNING TO READ, WRITE AND SPEAK SPANISH. New York: D. Appleton & Co. The Spanish language is becoming more and more popular in this country, both in respect to the reading and the speaking of it; and it seems likely, at no distant period, to find a place on the list of fashionable accomplishments. “Orlendorff's method," in respect to French and German, has been greatly approved both in this country and in Europe; and it is no less applicable to Spanish than the other languages. The value of the work is much increased by an appendix, containing tables of the regular conjugations of the verbs, copious lists of the irregular verbs, &c. CHESS FOR WINTER EVENINGS, &c.: By H. R. Agnel. New York: D. Appleton & Co. We profess ourselves profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of the science of which this book treats. This much, however, we can conscientiously report concerning it; that it is a good looking book, outside and inside, and that it is full of mystic figures and letters, (we speak as the uninitiated,) which make it look like a compound of algebra and geometry. There are a few splendid engravings that are quite intelligible to us, at least as specimens of the art, and which, for that reason, our eye reposes upon, as a green spot in the wilderness. INSTRUCTIONS TO YOUNG MARKSMEN, CONCERNING THE AMERICAN RIFLE: By John Ratcliffe Chapman. Appleton & Co. Here again, we acknowledge ourselves as not even learners, where it would seem we ought to be teachers or at least judges. But the book is well printed, is written in a good style, is full of "rifle equipments," "targets," "gunpowder," and other offensive materials; and we should not wonder if some of the feathered and perhaps unfeathered tribes had occasion to rue the day when it was written. A GOSSIPPING LETTER. SPRING is here, according to the almanac: but how the almanac belies nature in these northern latitudes. Spring!—what a practical joke on the poets!Where is her girdle of flowers, her breath of balm, her aviary, her sylvan music? You may see a hyacinth or a narcissus through a window-pane, a canarybird whistling over a Franklin stove, and even venture out for half an hour at high noon without a dare-devil overcoat on your back. A bachelor robin made his appearance a few days ago: two days after a hermit of a blue-bird, looking "blue" enough, was seen to "hop the twig." A curious insect crawled out of my wood closet this morning, rather hesitatingly, but yet as if he expected, 'hem" and then, can a robin, or a blue-bird, or a bug? "Answer me that, Master Brook." But do you hear that grave-yard cough?-that's Spring. Do you hawk yourself, as if you meant to expectorate your stomach?-that's Spring. Is your next-door neighbor down with a dysentery, or a nervous fever?-that's Spring. Are you languid, vibrating between a shiver and a sweat, with an ap petite at eleven o'clock and none at all at dinner-time?-Believe me, my dear fellow, you are a victim of Spring. "Etherial mildness, come!" and give some of the poets a look into your Pandora's box cf colds, coughs, and coffins." Ah! Spring is a nymph, you say. I wish she would make a shift, then, to cover herself. Such a display of bare arms as I see through my window-looking at the trees-I never noticed at an evening party. Still, I like the northern Spring. The blood really rushes with a tingling glow through the veins, if it does carry humors with it. The muscles, if they soon The air is very pleasant, grow weary, feel a nervous desire to move and act. if you are well wrapped up. Besides, hyacinths are very agreeable plants, even inside of a window. Don't you think so, Mary? Have you forgotten the day we put one out of the lattice, to allow it to feel the first touch of fresh air?You were handsomer then, and not married. Do you remember the verses, too? "Twas out the winnock sin' yestreen, And noo ilk leaf, sac fiel an' green, A' noiselessly afore the win' Its tiny leaflins move, Like modest joy that stirs within The virgin heart 'o luve." But, Timotheus, you are not Mary; so, pardon me. Talking of flowers,— did it ever occur to you, that every one is a palace to smaller insects than we are? It is evanescent, I know; but is not the same true of "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself?" Yes, the flower is the scene of the life and death of many created things Tho lily is their marble monument; the rose their scented boudoir. The pollen of the blossom is the down upon which they sleep; the dew-drop their mirror. They breathe its atmosphere of fragrance for their daily breath; they amuse themselves upon and under its endless variety of color. They feed upon the yellow dust of its corolla; they drink honey from its inexhaustible nectaries: they climb its polished filaments as if they were the pillars of their temple, and hide in its delicate tubes. How we despise their ephemeral enjoyments! How then must our devotion to the pleasures of a transitory life (we, too, are creatures of a day) appear, to those who already live in eternity! I was amused by -'s thoughts on human inconsistency; yet it is the most melancholy subject, almost or quite, in the world. Think of Solomon, the promising young philosopher, praying for wisdom instead of riches and honor, showing a deep moral insight into all human concerns, building a temple of unequalled splendor to the God of his father; then drenching himself in the lowest dissipation, and wallowing with the robes of intellectual royalty still around him, in the sty of Epicureanism. Remember Sallust, discoursing morality by the page, yet hoarding money forced by rapine and crucity from those confided to his charge; and whipped by an outraged husband for an insult to his bed. See Sterne, weeping over a dead donkey, and then allowing his mother to starve in peace: Henry Eighth, the first "Defender of the Faith," the first to kick his protegé out of doors because it withstood his adultery: Sydney Smith, drawing admiring crowds to hear him preach evangelical sermons, stolen bodily from Barrow. Voltaire says: "Human nature is capable of every thing. Nero wept when he was obliged to sign a warrant for the arrest of a criminal, and-mur dered his mother. It is just so with baboons. They are always leering and laughing, but choke their own cubs. Nothing is so gentle, so timid, as a grey. hound; but she rends a hare in pieces, and dabbles her long nose in his blood." Take some less memorable examples. You have heard, perhaps, of the Southern gentleman, who said that he should hate to live in New-England,-" religion is so devilish low there." At a certain indignation meeting of "Dorr sym. pathizers" in Rhode Island, an orator, in the course of certain lugubrious com. plaints against the "Algerines" of "Law and Order," exclaimed pathetically, that "Mr. Dorr was not even allowed a Bible in his cell." Some sentimental and piously-inclined member of his oratory uttered audibly the expression, that "it was too dd bad." In looking over your last volume, I noticed that you allude to the classical affinities of one of your contributors with a spice of fun. You think that he would prefer a visit to Baiæ to a jaunt to Saratoga. Your friend is not peculiar in this. Who does not, at times, wish that he might have lived in the olden time? We cannot describe how delightful it would have been to have revelled in the bowers of Eden, with Eve, the first and lovliest of women, at our side: to have tended sheep on the green hill-sides of the land of Lot and Abraham: to have gazed on the majestic beauty of Pharaoh's daughter, or to have witnessed the sweet life of sweet Ruth: to have visited the Shunamite widow, and heard from her own lips concerning the good man, Elisha, who restored her child to life and to her arms: to have listened to the music of the fair improvisatrice, Miriam, or to have been stirred by the duett of Barak and Deborah to the martial accompaniment of the trumpet and tamborine. How sublime to have witnessed the destruction of Pharaoh's host, or started back at the mysterious annihilation of the army of Sennacherib: to have walked among the gilded pillars of Solomon's temple: to have been among Paul's auditory at Mars's Hill, or been amazed at his splendid eloquence before Agrippa: above all, to have stood among the "lilies of the field," and in sight of the "city set upon a hill," while Christ was in godlike accents preaching on the Mount. The glory of such dreams is oppressive to the fancy. Then think of hearing Homer chant his immortal rhapsodies at the corners of the streets, Demosthenes shake with his voice of thunder the judges of Athens, Cicero charm people and senate with the sonorous flow of his eloquence: of listening to the table-talk of Catullus, and the brilliant conversation of the well-informed Pliny: of observing the Corinthian Lais throw the spell of her beauty around philosophers, or of gazing with religious awe upon the devoted wife of Paetus. Then to imagine you, Mary, a Lady Rowena, whose stately loveliness should bring a thousand knights to your feet; and me, a knight-errant, your knight-errant, with the strength and courage of an Ivanhoe, ready to do battle day and year in your service, or kiss with chivalrous courtesy your hand. Who would not love to have wandered in the groves of the Academy, and heard the "divine Plato" discourse his almost-Christian philosophy? Who would not yearn to have been a witness of the fearful battles of Thermopylæ, Salamis, Issus, Marathon, wherein a handful of Greeks overthrew the tumultuous hosts of Persia? O, to have been at the levèes of Augustus, and invited to meet Virgil, Mæcenas, and Horace. O, to have rambled through the vales of Arcadia, or along the banks of the Meander: to have culled the roses of Pæstum, or to have been lulled asleep by the murmurs of the bees of Hybla and Hymettus: to have lingered by the cascades of the Anio, or watched stately swans floating down the Caijster! These are but vagrant touches from a panorama of infinite variety; isolated sketches from the picture which fills the world of the past; fragments from an eternal circle of beauty. Who would not love to have lived in the Olden Time? |