and said, with their own lips, "Moore, I am glad to see you;" and how Mr. Webster, the American, said, in a marked manner," Mr. Moore, I am happy to make your acquaintance." The reader is made free of all the distinguished drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in London; and hears all the sweet things that were said, or sung, or written, about this fascinating little Emerald bard.

For fascinating, socially, there is no doubt that he was. He had ease, and grace, and liveliness of manner; he had seen what is called the best London society for nearly half a century; he was full of anecdotes of the famous people of his time; he had a discursive, but effective, acquaintance with many books, and knew how to bring his accomplishments to bear; he had a ready wit, a quick sympathy, a refined and delicate taste; he had the prestige of a great and peculiarly affectionate reputation; and he sang his own smooth songs to the sweet melodies of his native land. He lived, and moved, and had his being, in society. He understood it, and humored it, and sucked all the honey out of it. All this is clearly shown in his diary. His vanity was perfectly frank, his selfishness was equally so; but they both seem such inseparable attributes of the man, that it is bard to quarrel with them. We must take him for what he was. No man or woman, whose youth is made romantic in memory by the association of his songs sung in summer moonlights, and in cheerful winter evening parlors, but will let the tear that falls on these pages wash away the stains and preserve the sparkles.

The last two volumes are very sad; for it is melancholy to see the man of sixty-three still unchanged from the boy of twenty-three, still as eager for the Duke's dinner and the Countess's smile. And you see the mental decay, also the failure of memory, the general confusion. Lord John has dealt gently with this exposure; he has preserved only enough to show that it was there. In his sixty-third year, Moore is just as hard up for money as when he began his life. His two sons, the only remaining children, die—one at home, one in Algeria. Moore and his sweet Bessie are left childless at Sloperton; and, soon after the last date recorded in the volumes, the mental cloud settled forever over the singer, and he dined, and VOL. VIII.-7

breakfasted, and chirped, and sang, no more. His life was only a ballet of flowers, and music, and wine; but when the curtain falls, it is with a tear, and not with a smile, that we turn away. At an early day, we hope to return to these volumes, and the life, and times, and literature they commemorate. Meanwhile, “Oh! blame not the bard," gentle reader!

----A selection from the Poems of Richard Chenevix Trench has been published in a handsome volume by Redfield, edited by the Rev. J. A. SPENCER, who dates his preface, "New York, Easter even, 1856." Mr. Trench is already known to the American public by his admirable works upon "The Study of Words," "English Past and Present," "Synonyms of the New Testament," etc., etc., which have all been republished by the same house. Beside these works, he has published, in England, four volumes of verse, each of which has passed beyond the first edition. He writes with great ease and simplicity, and in a tender, Christian strain, of a multitude of subjects, suggested by travel, by study, and observation of nature, but without strong passion or imagination. The religious and oriental ballads in the volume are well chosen, and equally well told. Among others, Mr. Trench gives a version of the old legend of the monk and the bird, which the reader may like to compare with Longfellow's treatment of the same story in the "Golden Legend," and the Rev. C. T. Brooks's translation of the German Müller's poem upon the same subject. Mr. Trench will not rank with the poets, but with the pleasant and welcome singers.

-Heart-Songs is the title of a waif of lovely poems, published by Crosby & Nichols, Boston. It is probably the collection of a young hand; for the general tone of the volume is passionate and sad. The poems express that longing which at once fires and saddens the heart of youth. Many of them will be new to most readers. The following, which was first published anonymously, three or four years since, in the London Leader, is so beautiful a poem that we are delighted to find it in this permanent form:

"SUMMER DAYS. "In summer, when the days were long, We walked together in the wood: Our heart was light, our step was strong, Sweet flutterings were there in our blood, In summer, when the days were long.

"We strayed from morn till evening came;
We gathered flowers, and wove us crowns;
We walked 'mid poppies red as flame,
Or sat upon the yellow downs;
And always wished our life the same.

"In summer, when the days were long,
We leaped the hedgerow, crossed the brook;
And still her voice flowed forth in song,
Or else she read some graceful book,
In summer, when the days were long.

"And then we sat beneath the trees,
With shadows lessening in the noon;
And, in the sunlight and the breeze,
We feasted, many a gorgeous June,
While larks were singing o'er the leas.

"In summer, when the days were long,
On dainty chicken, snow-white bread,
We feasted, with no grace but song,
We plucked wild strawberries ripe and red,
In summer, when the days were long.

"We loved, and yet we knew it not,
For loving seemed like breathing then;
We found a heaven in every spot;
Saw angels, too, in all good men;
And dreamed of God in grove and grot.

"In summer, when the days are long,
Alone I wander, muse alone;

I see her not; but that old song
Under the fragrant wind is blown,
In summer, when the days are long.

"Alone I wander in the wood:

But one fair spirit hears my sighs;
And half I see, so glad and good,
The honest daylight of her eyes,
That charmed me under earlier skies.

"In summer, when the days are long,
I love her as we loved of old;
My heart is light, my step is strong,
For love brings back those hours of gold,
In summer, when the days are long.'
-The American publishers of TENNYSON,
Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, have
issued a small pocket edition of his poems.
It is of the most exquisite taste, in every
way. All his poems, including In Memo-
riam, The Princess, and Maud, are con-
tained in a small, convenient pocket vol-
ume, beautifully printed and bound. It is
the most perfect of summer books; and
the poems of one of the truest poets that
ever illustrated our language, may be had
for the price of the last worthless novel.

-Of recent American novels, Mr. FRANCIS PARKMAN'S Vassall Morton, published by Phillips & Sampson, Boston, is the best. Mr. Parkman has already won a name in our literature, by his admirable History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, which is one of the most vigorous, and valuable, and interesting works in the American historical library; and by the Oregon Trail, a book of travels and adventure in the shadow of

the Rocky Mountains. Vassall Morton is a lively story of American life and character, told with freshness and spirit, and with touches of unusual exoellence, showing a power of rendering the pure Yankee, and some other characteristics of our life, which it is disappointing not to find more fully developed in the story. The plot is simple, but rather improbable, and the whole work bas a sketchy character, as if it had been thrown off in the intervals of severer studies. Vassall Morton is altogether superior to the great mass of novels with which we are now flooded; it has none of the extravagant sentimentalism and burlesque with which they poison the public mind; but Mr. Parkman's literary position provokes a demand, not of comparative, but of positive, excellence, in any work he undertakes, and his novel does not satisfy that demand. A good novel is a work of more careful labor than seems to have been bestowed upon this; and the degree of excellence it has, makes us wonder that it is not better. Despite which hard words, we repeat that it is much the best of the late American novels.

-In The Youth of the Old Dominion, by SAMUEL HOPKINS, (Harper & Brothers.) we are pleasantly informed of the early history of Virginia, by a series of sketches, fictitious in form, but historical in substance. The romantic adventures of John Smith, that hero of the seventeenth century-at first among the Turks, and afterwards among the Indians-furnish the staple of the first story, and the spirited revolt of Nat. Brown against the gov ernment of Sir William Berkeley, that of the second. Both are told with much skill, and with a minute reproduction of the life and manners of the period. Mr. Hopkins has made a conscientious study of his authorities, and woven his incidents together into picturesque and striking effects. We are not sure, however, that a veritable history in all respects, might not have been constructed, of equal vivacity and of greater value. No episodes in the annals of our country are more susceptible of fanciful adornment, and none, at the same time, more interesting as simple, unadorned facts, if narrated with the least skill.

-When General Cass was our Minister to France, he obtained from the colonial archives transcripts of a great many official and private letters relating to the first

settlements of the French along the St. Lawrence, and these have been incorporated by Mr. SHELDON, in an Early History of Michigan which he has prepared. They were valuable documents, and throw much light on the various incidents of the colonization of what was then a remote and savage wilderness. By means of these, and such help as he could procure from pub lished histories and the authentic accounts of actual residents, Mr. Sheldon has composed a valuable and instructive volume. He describes the fortunes of the Michigan settlements, from the granting of the first commission to Jacques Cartier, by Francis I., to the surrender of Hull at Detroit, giving in the course of the narrative a great many characteristic traits of border life, and a very clear and consistent sketch of the slow but sure triumph of civilization over the barbarous state. He has not forgot to signalize the efforts of all those who contributed to the result, and of the more eminent personages, such as Vicar General Richard, James May, James Wetherell, and Lewis Cass, he presents engraved portraits, together with maps of the early towns and sieges.

-The Sparrowgrass Papers, by FREDERIC S. COZZENS (Derby & Jackson), are already familiar to our readers, and will, therefore, be most gladly welcomed by them in this permanent form. We have been not a little proud of the books which have been gathered from our pages; but never with more reason than in this instance. Mr. Cozzens is a true humorist. He unites the exuberance of fun, the simple pathos, and the quick sympathy and perception which make up that most delightful quality that has recently been claimed by a competent critic to be almost peculiar, in its fullness, to modern literature. The delicate sarcasm, truthful painting, picturesque description, and gushing geniality, are so harmoniously combined in the Sparrowgrass Papers, that they seem to us to be a most valuable addition to our literature, and to place the author among the most promising of our younger writers. The sketches are entirely free from caricature; they are full of nature and familiar life, and they show, in such sparkling detail, the soul of comedy in common things, and are such a lively and carefully-studied commentary upon the amusing episodes of country or suburban

experience, that we cannot dismiss them merely as gay magazine papers. We are essentially a serious people. Satire that has a sting, and a moral drift, is not uncommon in our literature. But pure fun and sweet sarcasm are not to be easily cited, except from Irving. The Sparrowgrass Papers are of that graceful, humane, and genial school; and we shall easily be pardoned our natural pride, that Mr. Sparrowgrass first told in our pages his story of "Living in the Country."

-Among other original and reprinted novels we may mention Aspen Court, a story of English society of the day, originally pub lished in Bentley's Miscellany, and reprinted in New York by Stringer & Townsend. The American edition is prefaced by a letter of Mr. H. W. Herbert's, extolling the story, and preferring it to those of Dickens and Thackeray. This was an equally unnecessary and unfortunate proceeding, for it provokes comparisons which should not be made. The author of Aspen Court is SHIRLEY BROOKS, who is one of the writers for Punch, and a hard-working London litterateur, and whose name the reader may recall as the author of the Punch burlesque of the Hiawatha verse. He has written a most readable and brilliant story.

It has the fault of many periodical tales; the incidents are sometimes strained and improbable, and it is much too long. But it is an exceedingly clever novel of the modern English school, tasting both of Thackeray and Dickens, but we differ from Mr. Herbert in thinking it superior to either of them in any way. It has much more intricacy and elaboration of plot than is now usual in novels: whirls the reader through a great variety of life, dines him at Brooks's, at chop-houses, at Richmond; takes him to a lord's country-seat, and an attorney's chambers, parliament, the police court, and a cockney dancing-hall; makes him intimate with cabinet ministers, and Jesuit priests, and young actresses; with a brutal bore, ci-devant jeune homme, and his lovely wife and children, and, especially, with a heroine whom the priest, with a kind of Lady Guy Flouncey friend, tries to abduct, and whom the hero, who is young, and handsome, and silent, and making his way in the world by the English novelapproved methods of political advancement, finally marries. There are dinners, and

suppers, and routs, and rides, and rails, and highwaymen, and boxers, and a mysterious lawyer, with a profoundly mysterious will, involving the title of the pleasant countryplace called Aspen Court-all these things, and people, and events, stud the thick pages, and combine to make the most readable of the recent novels we have seen. It is not a first-rate novel; but it is high among the second-rate. It shows great invention and facility, and a great deal of brilliancy, or what the English call cleverness. If Shirley Brooks would write a novel half as long, we have no doubt that it would be twice as good, and he would then have no difficulty in getting the ear of the public.

-The genuine Paris cockney is the most ludicrous of all cockneys, and M. LEON BEAUVALLET's Rachel and the New World (translated for, and published by Dix, Edwards & Co.) is his latest contribution to literature. It is a running commentary upon the Rachel campaign in this country, including all the financial details, and including, also, Jules Janin's performance upon Rachel's American adventure, which is no less amusing than the history itself. The Paris cockney, of the true breed, believes in the Boulevard des Italiens, and disbelieves in all the world beside. The Gymnase theatre is his heaven, Rose Chéri his Hebe, Rachel his Melpomene, eau sucrée his nectar, and a filet aux champignons his ambrosia, beyond words. There is no other city than Paris, there is no other civilization but the French. He prefers Racine to the great Greeks, and actually believes there is such a thing as poetry in French literature. His brain is small, and his trowsers large; his pocket and his heart are equally empty; nature is a foolish invention of the poets; Queen Victoria lives in the Tower and eats roast beef at all hours of the day, saying damn between the courses; Americans carry scalping-knives for canes, and whittle away their houses. The Paris cockney is the personification of good-humored ignorance, weakness, and innocence. He is not a person but a poodle, with corresponding responsibilities and powers. With the exceptions of De Tocqueville and Chevalier, there is scarcely a tolerable French book upon the United States. The present volume has, of course, no other pretension than that of being a view of American life from the traveling French stage. It is

extremely droll, as showing what kind of impression America, with all its variety and scope of life, makes upon a child of the Boulevards. He finds musquitoes, heavy bread, and great fires. We are all sodden and besotted; Barnum twists us all around his finger; we freely assassinate each other, and applaud rope-dancing; but for the sublime verse of Corneille and Racine, we have no taste, foolishly sticking to our Shakespeare; Jules Janin's feuilleton about Rachel's insanity, in trying to amuse a set of shopkeepers, made us all gnash our teeth, and excited the city of New York to the verge of revolution. The book is really valuable from its extreme niaiserie. You could not more usefully spend an hour than in reading it, and ascertaining the capacity of an utter Parisian, called, indifferently, Leon Beauvallet or Jules Janin.

-We can refer, with approval, to the Colomba of PROSPER MERIMEE, a graphic, truthful, and absorbing narrative of Corsican life, written with all the characteristic clearness and picturesque effect of the French romances. In the Berenice of an unknown writer, a tale of the Passamaquoddy region, there is also unusual merit. It is simple and unpretending, but is marked, throughout, by great good sense, quick perceptions, poetic sensibility, and considerable artistic skill. Miss CAREY'S Married not Mated is a lively and agreeable story, told with much freshness of feeling, a keen insight into common American life, and not a little humor. It is, however, occasionally raw or careless in style. The Zoe of MRS. LIVERMORE is a work of remarkable talent and the most generous purposes, conceived with freedom and executed with vigor; but, as a tale, it is strangely deficient in dramatic power. The object of the accomplished author has been to elevate the sentiment of the country to the highest pitch of Christian truth and charity; but, in her eagerness to teach and improve, she has somewhat forgotten the demands of art. The great end of fiction is to amuse, and, by amusing, to instruct; but, in Mrs. Livermore's book, the didactic purpose surmounts the artistic. Her thoughts are often profound and liberal, her sentiments elevated, and there are passages of fine criticism and rare eloquence in her pages; the characters are also pretty well defined;