yet the whole, as a story, fails in producing a deep interest.

-Two more volumes of the excellent Ticknor & Fields edition of DE QUINCEY go far towards convincing us that this source is really inexhaustible. They are better than the last volume--the "Note Book"-containing, besides some personal memorials, a fae discussion of the Pagan Oracles, and the novel of Klosterheim—a most original production. This series, for which Mr. De Quincey returns a heart-felt thanks to the publishers, Ticknor & Fields, and wherein every reader will sympathize with him, now extends to twenty volumes. Beginning with the "Confessions of an Opium Eater," by which the author first made himself known, and will be longest remembered, it embraces nearly all his subsequent publications, various as they are. Autobiographic sketches, narrative papers, historical criticisms, literary reminiscences, and philosophical, theological, scientific, and miscellaneous essays, are singularly mingled in them; and it sometimes puzzles the critic to satisfy himself as to the particular part of this wild field in which De Quincey is most at home. There is, however, no difficulty in telling where he is least skillful-and that is in the analysis of philosophers. The volume which treats of Hamilton, Macintosh, Kant, Lessing, etc., is the least satisfactory of the set. Next to this, in the scale of comparative want of merit, we should place the theological essays, which are subtle and ingenious, but sophistical; and next to these, again, the essays on the English poets and writers, though all of these contain many superlative passages. But between the four other classes of his writings-1st, the dreamy idiosyncrasies, such as the "Confessions," and "Suspiria,”-2d. the autobiographic sketches-3d, the imaginative narrative papers, such as the "Household Wreck," and "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe”—and 4th, the historical criticisms, we are at a loss to choose. There is such keenness of sensibility in all of them, such penetration of insight, such mastery of judgment, such wealth of learning, such visionary fancy, such awful sweep of imagination, such pomp and power of movement, accompanied by unearthly melodies of style, that it is the last we read which fills us with most admiration and wonder. De Quincey combines, in his intellectual struc

ture, many high qualities, which at first seem to be incompatible. To a verbal analysis, as subtle as that of the most wiredrawing scholastic, he adds the erudition of a German professor, and the profoundest emotional susceptibility of the poet. But he differs from the scholastic, in that his acuteness is always more practical; and from the German professor, in that his learning is easily worn; and from the generality of poets, in that he is able to give a dramatic as well as lyric expression to his feelings. But De Quincey, great as his powers are, is not a universal genius. He sometimes mistakes his function. humor, which he is so fond of sporting, is not genuine. It is assumed, stilted, and forced. Nor is he uniformly that master of style which he pretends to be. A great many passages, even in his best book, strike us as tours de force, rather than as natural, graceful movements. Grappling his subjects, like a gymnast, he wrestles with them, in a kind of frenzied energy, and, at last, unable to bring them down, springs clear from the ground and disappears, with a gigantic chuckle, in the mists.

His

-The best volume by far of the Maginn Miscellanies, for which we are indebted to DR. MACKENZIE, is that containing the Homeric Ballads and extracts from the comedies of Lucian. It exhibits the finest powers of the eccentric author in their finest aspect. Containing none of that exuberant and coarse wit for which he is famous, it has all his learning, taste, vivacity, and sense. As a translator Maginn has few superiors, for he not only gives you the meaning of the original, which any mechanical pedant may do, but he adds the manner also, the very life and characteristic of his author. It was a happy conceit of his, to turn the ballads of Homer into real English ballads, by getting rid of the stiff and sounding heroic metres in which they had been usually translated, and substituting for them the free and flowing metres of the more popular poems. How much more entertaining and lively are his renderings, than the elegant inaccuracies of Pope, or the inelegant accuracies of CowIt is true, one cannot prefer them to Chapman; but, next to Chapman's, they As to the comeare clearly the best. dies of Lucian, they have never been well translated, and the scholar must regret

per.

that Maginn did not devote himself to the task of a complete version. His sympathy with the wit of Lucian would have enabled him to give almost every line con amore. We are pleased to see that Dr. Mackenzie has followed the original text of Maginn, in his reprint, and not the mutilated English edition published some years ago.

-The tenth volume of MR. HUDSON'S edition of Shakespeare-which we have before commended, as, on the whole, about the best we know-brings him to the profounder plays of the great bard-to Hamlet, and Othello-in which he has a better opportunity for the display of his higher critical abilities. As a mere corrector of texts, and a notator of difficulties, Mr. Hudson has superiors among editors otherwise inferior; but as a true artistic critic-as an analyist of the creations of Shakespeare, and an appreciator of his mighty genius, he places himself on a level, to say the least-and to say a great deal in saying it with the best German and English critics. There could be no more admirable proof of this than the remarks on the much disputed question, as to the character of Hamlet, prefixed to the play. Goethe, Schlegel, Hazlitt, Coleridge, etc., have all tried their hands at the interpretation of this character, and all with differing results. "One man considers Hamlet great, but wicked; another, good, but weak; a third, that he lacks courage, and dare not act; a fourth, that he has too much intellect for his will, and so thinks away the time of action; some conclude him honestly mad; others, that his madness is wholly feigned. Yet, notwithstanding this diversity of conclusions, all agree in thinking and speaking of him as an actual person." "The question is, why such unanimity as to his being a man, and, at the same time, such diversity as to what sort of a man he is?" To this question, Mr. Hudson suggests an answer, which is a fine specimen of philosophy, as well as of writing, and we commend it to the reader, as worthy of his most studious perusal. But the same thing is true of the introduction to Othello, and, in fact, of all these introductions, which we run no risk in pronouncing among the best contributions made to our American literature. (James Munroe & Co.)

-A hitherto almost untrodden field of

historical research has been entered by MR. CoGGESHALL in his History of American Privateers and Letters of Marque, which is executed with much industry and enthusiasm. Having been a privateer himself, during the war of 1812, he naturally sympathized with those who were employed in the same way, and thinking that the nation had never returned the due meed of praise to the hardy and enterprising men by whom such patriotic services were rendered, he has undertaken their vindication. His authorities are, besides his own recollections, the communications of officers of the navy, cotemporary privateers, and Niles's Register. His aim is to give the name of every privateer that sailed from our ports, and to record what they accomplished. In doing this, he is of course obliged to review many of our more distinguished naval actions of a regular kind, which gives variety to his text. A great deal of detail is necessarily introduced, not of much interest now; but, on the whole, the adventures described, are full of stirring incidents. None are more so than the author's own. Commanding a Letter of Marque, he was engaged in several actions, was taken prisoner by a British frigate, confined in the garrison at Gibraltar, makes his escape, joins a gang of smugglers, at Algeciras, runs away to Cadiz, lives there some time, and finally effects a return to New York, This volume is useful as showing the number and effective services of the private armed vessels fitted out by the United States, during the short war of 1812-13-14. They were two hundred and fifty in number, and, reckoning the number of vessels taken or destroyed by these as ten each, which is a safe calculation, we have some twenty-five hundred as the aggregate. Eighteen bundred sail are recorded as having been taken, burnt, or sunk, in various engagements, during our naval combats, and it is not to be presumed that the official lists contain the whole number. The number taken by the British is reported at five hundred, chiefly during the first six months of the war. Capt. Coggeshall is seventy-two years of age, and writes his book as a tribute to the bravery and skill of our seamen. It is full of the spirit of the now almost forgotten contest, showing that the "wonted fires" are not yet extinguished in his breast.

-ARTHUR HELPS is favorably known in

this country, by his little work called "Friends in Council," full of fine thought and noble Christian sentiment; but in his History of the Spanish Conquest in America he has essayed a broader field. The peculiarity of his work is, that it does not tell the story of Spanish conquest merely, already ably handled by Robertson, Irving, and Prescott, to say nothing of the native Spanish authorities, but he describes the results of that conquest, particularly in their relation to the establishment of slave ry. It is a remarkable and saddening fact, that just at the time when Europe was escaping from the oppressions of its social existence, when the feudal system was coming to an end, in the downfall of the barons and the rise of the national monarchies, when the papacy, shattered by the great schism, was rapidly declining, when letters revived and commerce took a new impulse from the oceanic discoveries, and the press was beginning to give a popular validity to knowledge-a new species of slavery was fastened upon the just discovered New World. It was not the slavery which had prevailed in the ancient world, where the slave was the captive of war; it was not the serfage of the middle ages, in which the slave was but the military vassal of his lord; but it was a slavery brought on systematically, by commercial greediness and reckless cruelty, and the history of which furnishes some of the darkest pictures in the annals of our race. Still, these are not pictures wholly without lights; for the same period exhibits many noble and generous actions undertaken in resistance to the system, and many remarkable characters. Mr. Helps has performed his part of the work with unusual diligence and talent. Much of the ground he passes over is new, so that his materials could only be gathered from original sources. He has labored strenuously and patiently, and the result is a most valuable as well as interesting book. His narrative is simple, clear, and flowing; his descriptions of persons and events quite graphic; and his reflections such as do honor to his head and heart. To us Americans, his story has a two-fold interest; first, as the inhabitants of a part of that continent to which it relates; and, second, as the heirs of that social condition which grew out of its leading events.

These volumes are illustrated throughout by small wood-cut maps, which greatly as

sist us in the understanding of the text, and which we should like to see imitated in other books of history. As one does not always read in his library, where charts and maps are at hand, it is a great help to have a ready reference in the book itself.

-The Harpers have republished ALIson's second series of his History of Europe. As to the merits of the work, we have already given an elaborate opinion, in a notice of the first volume, about the time of its appearance in England. The subsequent volumes furnish us no reason for changing the unfavorable opinion then expressed. As a narrative of current events, it is a very good digest of the annual registers, but, in all the higher qualities of history, it is quite deficient. It is careless in style, and inaccurate in statement, while the general reflections are trite, and the philosophy, if it has any, shallow in the extreme. There is a certain animation in the description of political events and of wars, but the literary criticisms are contemptible. What is to be thought of a historian, for instance, who can gravely state that Delille and Beranger are the only poets of any note that have appeared in France since the restoration, who classes Capefigue and Lacatreler among the great French historians, and omits all mention of Mignet ; who says of Lamennais, that he is one who sees "in the extension of the influence of the Romish faith the only guarantee for the virtue or happiness of the species" of Lamennais, who was such a bitter opponent of the "Romish faith"or, who again speaks of Lamennais's "Work on the Human Mind," in three volumes, as "a perfect fund of reflection," whereas he wrote no work at all on the human mind. Describing Cuvier, Mr. Alison says that, "disregarding the species of man and of animals," he devoted his studies to organic remains, while the fact is, that Cuvier's principal work is the Regne Animale, which is exclusively taken up with the species of man and of animals." At the same time he reckons Humboldt among the number of French naturalists. Yet the book is full of such errors. The American edition, we observe, has been somewhat carelessly edited; for the table of contents, which is the key to the whole, is utterly without paging.

66

-There is getting to be a Hiawatha lite

rature, as there is a Shakespearian and Goethean. But none of the works occasioned by that American epic are so permanently valuable as the Myth of Hiawatha, and other oral legends of the North American Indians, collected by HENRY R. SCHOOLCRAFT, and published by J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia. This volume is a reproduction of the Algic Researches, with additions and revisions, and must always maintain its place in our literature. In this collection, and in the poem of Hiawatha, the Indian traditions will be preserved and perpetuated. We shall never know much of the Indians. Cooper leads us all astray with his Adonis Uncas. Mr. Schoolcraft knows more about them than any one else, and their mythologic and allegoric traditions, as he heard them from themselves, he has given us in this volume. The songs and chants, which are iuwoven with the original legends, are grouped together at the end of the volume.

-The Philosophy of History furnishes to PROFESSOR SHEDD, of Andover-whose edition of Coleridge is the edition-a theme for a small volume of lectures. They were delivered as an introduction to a course of prelections on ecclesiastical history, and treat, first, of the abstract idea of his tory; then of the nature and definition of secular history, and of church history; and, finally, of the verifying test in church history. It is needless for us to say that, brief as they are, they manifest a rare degree of philosophic ability. Professor Shedd is an accomplished thinker. He does his subjects the justice to study them well, and he matures his thoughts by careful reflection, as well as study. But we cannot always admire his style, which is somewhat stiff and affected; and we are far from approving the point of view from which he contemplates the movements of history. What he says of history as a development, and of the tests by which it is characterized as such, is striking, though not novel; but, further on, in making a distinction between secular history and church history, he falls into an enormous fallacy. Secular history he regards as a corrupt evolution, as an abnormal organic process, proceeding from the finite and corrupt will of man, while church history is "the restoring of the true development of the human spirit, by the supernatural agency of its Creator." All secular his

tory, therefore, exhibits an increasing apostasy, while church history exhibits the return to God. "Secular history is the unfolding of the fallen nature of man, left to its own spontaneity, and sacred history is the development of his regenerated nature under the continued influence of the power that first and instantaneously effected the change." In other and plainer words, secular history shows us hell upon earth, and sacred history, heaven upon earth; the former including the "mass of mankind,” or the large majority of men, in all ages; and the latter, a portion selected by a sovereign act, and regenerated and moulded into a body by itself, separate from the world, though existing in it." Now, without entering upon the theological grounds of this theory, which seem to us exceedingly narrow and sectarian, let us simply say, that it is wholly incapable of application to the actual facts of history. It is impossible to identify the regenerate life with any "body by itself," "truly organized," and "separate from the world." The regenerate life is an invisible life, which can only be known by its results, and these results manifest themselves, peculiarly, in no body or church, but are scattered through all the relations of life, are shown in the domestic circle and in trade, no less than in the synod or conventicle. The true sacred history, therefore, is the history of divine truth and goodness, wherever it is displayed, and the only secular history is the history of diabolical falsehood and wickedness, wherever that is displayed, even though in the midst of the church. But these are so inextricably mingled, in human affairs, that they cannot be "separated," distinctly and positively, as our author proposes. The omniscient eye, alone, is able to detect the secret regenerate life, while, to man, it is given simply to judge of character by its relative effects. It is the disposition to make this "separation," between the elect of God and the sinners, which has been the curse and misery of the world from the beginning. It is the attempt to transfer, to the finite and relative sphere of human nature, the absolute distinctions of the supernatural sphere, which has placed ecclesiastical history among the foulest and bloodiest pages of all history. Of course, we do not deny the possibility or the convenience of the distinction be

tween secular and sacred history, as a mere expedient of method, but we do most earnestly protest against making it the basis of a philosophy of history. Like the distinction of the Romanists between the church and the sects, it may answer very well as an artificial division in historical arrangement; but, when it is pressed as a real and valid truth in the nature of things, it becomes a pernicious error.

-There is room in literature for a good popular History of the English Bible, and that recently issued by Mrs. CONANT partly supplies the want. It is an elaborate narrative of the circumstances under which the several English versions of the sacred Scriptures have been prepared. We are first told of Wickliff's efforts, then of Tyndale's struggles against Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, next of Coverdale's attempts, and finally of the Bishops', the Genevan, and the common version. But the authoress does not satisfy herself with a dry record of the facts in regard to all these undertakings; she weaves into them many glimpses of the condition of society and opinion at successive periods, and describes for us many eminent personages who have figured on the stage of English life. As a whole, the book is one of especial value, showing considerable research, and abounding in clear and, sometimes, forcible discussion. The main defect of it, apparent to any person familiar with the details of history, is a certain partisan exaggeration in parts. In the description of England, for instance, before the time of Wickliff, there is a good deal of this kind of vague and untrue statement. "During the whole period" (from the conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century), it is said, we do not perceive, in the development of society, a single radically new idea," and then a painful account of the state of the religious orders, of the nobles, and of the universities is given, to magnify the glory of the early reformer. But, considering that this very period was that in which the fierce enmities between Saxon and Norman subsided; that then the whole system of serfdom was greatly relaxed; that Magna Charta laid the foundation of the purest and most durable political polity ever known; that the magnificent church architecture, which is still the admiration and surprise of mankind, arose; that the col

leges, which have educated two-thirds of the English gentlemen, were established; that the accomplished Roger Bacon so wonderfully anticipated his greater namesake, and that the poetry of Chaucer was written this seems a singular mode of treating history. Wickliff was, undoubtedly, a great man, and rendered important services to humanity, and his merits in every way are sufficiently great, not to require any false views of his times. As one of the earliest men to catch the spirit of the modern era- -learned, devout, and indomitable-he will always receive the homage of his successors. But the great principles for which he contended were already in the necessities of the times, having taken a deep root, some time before, in Italy, and if he had not represented them, some other man would have done so. Feudalism, the papacy, and all the other institutions of the middle age, were doomed to death by the influence then spreading in society, and all their efforts at resistance proved, more and more, how impotent their vitality was. With these thoughts in view, a good deal of instruction is to be got out of Mrs. Conant's book.

-The Rev. HENRY C. FISH has made a compilation of the master-pieces of pulpit eloquence, of all nations and nearly all ages, comprised in two large volumes, with the necessary introductory, and a history of preaching. It gives a single sermon from the repertory of distinguished preachers, generally in full, though sometimes only in part. Anybody wishing to form an idea of the manner of the most celebrated divines, from Chrysostom to Chalmers, will be able to do so by consulting this work. He must not expect, however, to find it impartial in its selections. The editor in his preface professes to have confined his choice to the "evangelical denominations"-in which we suppose the Roman Catholics are included, as we find Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Masillon, and other Frenchmen of that church; but we do not find among the representatives of the American pulpit, the names of Channing, or Buckminster-the two most eloquent preachers, perhaps, in our annals. In other respects the compilation is judiciously made.

-Let us mention, in connection with these preachers, MRS. CONANT's interesting