are our own governors. We undertake to manage and pilot the ship of state on our own responsibility, and we cannot avoid that undertaking, we cannot slink away from that responsibility, without incurring the guilt of a criminal non-performance of duty. The father of a family, who should allow his servants to eat up his substance, and squander the patrimony of his children. -the man of business, who should never look into the conduct of his clerks until they had ruined him by fraud or extravagance, would be universally reprobated, as either a very foolish or a very wicked man; and yet such a man is not one whit more reckless or more immoral than the citizen who enjoys the benignant right of suffrage and omits its use. Suffrage is the rudder of the state-it is its providence-it is that which guides and animates the commonwealth, and for any man to forego it, is not only to commit political suicide for himself, but to prove recreant to his highest and noblest obligations to his fellow-man.

How frequently have we heard, in late years, of the degeneracy of our politics. "The tone and vigor of public sentiment," it is said, "has fallen-the impelling motives of great parties are no longer principles, but spoils-our presidents are no more Washingtons and Madisons, but Tylers and Pierces-our senators are demagogues, who, for a petty personal triumph can betray an empire to servitude; and our representatives are Brookses and Herberts, who find large constituencies to applaud their doings, and larger factions to shelter them from the due penalties of public justice and public scorn. Look at the senate of the United States-a body which, in its palmy days, was one of the most dignified and respectable of legislative assemblies-now evincing a tenacity and meanness of party spirit

6

wholly unworthy of it; declaring, through its speakers, that laws are atrocious,' 'infamous,' unconstitutional,' disgraceful,' and yet refusing, on the shabbiest technical grounds, or in base subserviency to a party behest, to repeal those laws, though it had the power, and, in the mean time, allowing hundreds of men and women to be put to death in consequence of its neglect."

Admitting this, we repeat the question, who is to blame? Our position is, that they are to blame who may, and will not, prevent it. The community itself, which reufses to exercise and to enforce its discrimination in the choice of public officers, and in the determination of public policy, cannot ascribe such a condition of things to any stronger cause than its own previous political indifference. While men, capable of forming intelligent opinions, and capable of influencing the general mind, allow their absorption in business, their indolence, or their disregard of the vital consequences of political action, to keep them from forming opinions, and from expressing those opinions, by the effective agency of the ballot-box, they must expect to see public stations occupied by a degenerate class of statesmen-by persons, even, who are not entitled to the name of statesmen at all, but are the merest schemers and self-seeking traders in politics. What is not sown cannot be reaped, and they, who slumber instead of sowing, will find, as the Bible beautifully illustrates the truth, that the enemy, meanwhile, has filled the ground with tares.

The functions of government, on which so much of the physical and moral welfare of society depends, must be exercised by somebody; they do not execute themselves; they are applied either by upright or vicious men : and it remains with the people to determine to which of these they shall be committed.

-There is one thing, in the practice of the publishers, which we feel bound, more and more, to protest against, and that is, the slovenly mode in which they are in the habit of getting up" many of their publications. We had hoped that, as "the yellow-covered literature," which, a few years ago, took the name of cheap literature (though it was anything but cheap), passed away, a new and better style of typography would take its place; but in this we were destined to a disappointment. It is not to be denied, that some improvement has been made that books are now printed with larger type, and on fairer paper, than they used to be--but that improvement is so inconsiderable, and the room for further improvement still so large, that we have a right to complain of the deficiency. The typographical art among us is far beneath the standard at which it should aim. Occasionally, we produce a splendid showbook-a holiday-work, or a special attempt at proving the publisher's skill (which does prove that we are able to execute in the finest way, if we please)--but the average productions of our press are quite unworthy of our pretensions to taste. It is not too much to say, that seven out of ten of the books sent to our office for review, are either so badly printed, or so loosely put together, that few scholars would care to have them on their shelves. The paper is too often dingy, the type small and crowded, and the binding of the flimsiest sort. Now, a genuine lover of books--and the lovers of books are they who buy them--thinks almost as much of their external appearance as he does of their internal contents; and he is as unwilling to purchase an offensive-looking book, as another would be to pay his court to a mistress who was frowsy and slattern. Books are the perpetual companions of the reading man; they are ever before his eyes or in his hands; and in order to answer the purposes for which they are intended, they must combine the qualities of pleasingness and perpetuity. They must be both beautiful and strong-beautiful for the gratification of the sight and the touch, and strong to endure the corrosions of the

AND

REPRINTS.

years which are destined to pass over their heads, as they sit so silently side by side, in the nooks of the libraries. Of course, we do not apply these remarks to all books. There are some-such as the trumpery novels of the day--meant to be read only in railroad cars, and which ought not to be read there, which do not deserve a careful treatment. They are things of an hour -waste paper at best-on which it were a wicked squandering of time and skill to bestow labor. But it is not so with works which are really the offspring of genius: they are perennial, and demand a material form which shall be worthy of their greatness. There are other works, again, which, though not immortal, will yet command a certain circle of readers, and in publishing which, the publisher is sure of his market. Why need he look to the "cheapness" of these? The persons who are likely to read them, will have them at any price, and would greatly prefer to have them in an enduring and handsome shape. There are, for instance, Mr. Emerson's Essays, the recent translation of De Tocqueville, the Modern Painters of Mr. Ruskin, Grote's History of Greece, Macaulay's England-all works which are sure of a sale, not popular, but select and limited, and yet certain, among those classes of readers who can afford them in the best typographical style. Why should we be compelled to send to England for those, when we desire to place them in our parlors and libraries? We are aware that the reading people in this country are not always the rich people, and we do not plead for merely costly or showy books: what we are urging is, superior neatness, greater care in the choice of paper, and some attention to binding. It is only the other day that we took a leading historical work for consultation, and had not turned over a dozen pages, before as many leaves fell from their places. The consequence is, that we shall be compelled to buy a new edition of that work, or to have the old edition rebound. Had the book been prepared, in the first place, with the requisite care, it would have outlasted all the use that we shall probably make of it,

without having cost us anything more than the first price. As it is, it is almost useless. The truth is, that in the business of publishing, as in other kinds of business, in this country, we are too much in a hurry. We strike off and sew up our books with locomotive rapidity, and care very little how long they last, provided they once get out of the publisher's hands. Let us hope that this carelessness will cease, and that our publishers, who are so abundantly able, will learn to surpass the English in the art of printing and binding, as they appear to do in that of selling. Some of the books issued in this country are a credit to it, as well as to their publishers, and yet they are not extravagant as to price; and our desire is, as we believe it to be the desire of the entire reading public, that the number of these should be increased.

Everybody opened Dred, to ascertain if it were as good as Uncle Tom; and, because Uncle Tom had that charm which always belongs to a new theme, Dred was adjudged inferior. The notices of our own papers, before the publication, spoke of it as artistically superior to the first book. The English papers, since the publication, decry it as inferior on the whole. The London Leader, especially-a journal which affects democracy, and whose articles upon American affairs, or allusions to American principles, betray a ludicrous ignorance of the very elements of our society and government had a review of Dred, which Joseph Surface would have commended for its excellent sentiments, and Legree and Tom Gordon quoted as profound and conclusive. The English press in general pronounces Dred a failure-though the supreme authority of the Times declares otherwise-and private opinion at home, we presume, concurs in that judgment.

For ourselves, we can only wonder at the power which can produce two such works upon the same theme. Uncle Tom and Dred are both tales of slavery, as the Talisman and Ivanhoe are tales of chivalry; but they are each as fresh, as vigorous, as pathetic, and as dramatic as if the other had not been written. Neither Uncle Tom nor Dred are stories, in the proper sense of the term; that is, they have no plot which begins, and develops, and culminates. In Dred, for instance, Clayton is engaged to Nina upon the first page of the book,

and she dies in the middle of the second volume, while the story has not advanced a step. Both of Mrs. Stowe's novels are a series of sketches, forming altogether a masterly and wonderful representation of the great tragedy of slavery, in every possible aspect. They sum up the argument, the denunciation, the pity, the proof of the whole subject. Uncle Tom, as the first of the two, was the first glimpse, and had the advantage of the interest of novelty; but Dred has evidence of a better mastery of the materials. The most striking character in the last is Tiff-an old negro Caleb Balderstone, and yet a figure only possible in the American slave states. His humorwhich is not humor to himself-his affection, and his reversed pride, are perfect.

Tiff shows the best thing of which slavery is capable. When the poor, desolate Mrs. Cripps throws her arms around his neck, and clings to him as to her only friend upon earth, you have a scene which shows how true the affection may be between a master and a slave. But those who quote this scene triumphantly, forget that the same thing is true of many an old family nurse, who is not a slave; and that slavery, as such, has nothing to do with it. The affection is not produced by the system-it exists in spite of it. If you quote Tiff, you must also quote Milly. If you love Tiff's affection for his mistress, you must remember that the system which holds such a noble human being as a chattel, is the same system which degrades Cripps to a depth of which we can form scarcely an idea. Nina is a sparkling sketch-unsatisfactory, but lovely. She is elusive as a bumming bird; and it is a relief that she is taken by the pestilence, before she breaks her heart against the social wires around her. The chapter of her death is like wild, sad music, rising naturally into the beautiful poem of Hood's with which it concludes. Milly is a character of which we had no type in Uncle Tom. It is unspeakably sad, yet simply and naturally drawn. Tom Gordon is the swaggering, and Tekyl the canting, human brute. Clayton is the sad protest of intelligence against a destructive principle; and Dred, himself, is a tragic image of Africa, its eyes and hands raised to heaven, and its mouth full of wrath and denunciation. Dred seems hardly to be a person; but he looms through the story, a vast presence of wrath and woe. Like the

spectre of the Brocken, he has a human semblance, but he towers above the human standard. Dred, in the story, represents the wronged and avenged genius of Africa. He stands for a race. He gathers the oppressed and fugitives into his care and protection. He grieves over them--he rages for them--he lives to avenge themhe dies protecting them. There is certainly something very majestic, although shadowy, in the impression he makes. His character gives a grand tragic dignity to the book, which is, therefore, properly named from him.

But, with all this variety, with the wonderful knowledge of negro life and character which the work shows, with the dramatic power developed in the dialogue, with a force of description so graphic that the reader is often compelled to pause, so exciting is the detail, there is yet, as we said, no story, no novel. Figures appear and act, as only the greatest novelists can make them; scenes are described, as only masters can describe them; but there is no artistic sequence or unity. As a work of art, therefore, or a pleasure to mere story-readers, Dred is not successful; but as a complete panorama of a system of society, in all its relations, Dred is just as remarkable as Uncle Tom. Like that, too, it is, in a certain sense, an anti-slavery tract. It routs, it annihilates, the sophistry with which the question is usually treated. As Kingsley is apt to break away from his story in the burning pursuit of the object for which the story is written, so Mrs. Stowe, intent upon showing to the world what slavery really is, treats the exigencies of her characters very cavalierly. The incidents are merely illustrative of life in a slave state. That would be a proper title for both the books. In this view, the sturdy and overwhelming manner in which the author grapples with the canting, religious support of slavery, is refreshing. "The camp-meeting" is a chapter not to be surpassed for accuracy of actual details, for the blighting satire of truth, or for skillful characterization. It is the southside view of slavery, taken upon the spot. It is the tragical exposition of the meaningless superstition into which religion falls when it is used as the excuse for sin. Or is the grave and decorous Presbyterian debate, after the death of Nina, at the house of Clayton's uncle, more hopeful than the riotous Method

ism of the camp-meeting? If Father Bonnie talked as he did in the woods, is it surprising that the Rev. Dr. Cushman should talk as he did in the parlor? Which was the follower of Christ--Father Bonnie, or Dr. Cushman, or Father Dickson? Or were they all so?

Is the tendency of such books bad? Do such stories tend to promote unkind feeling between brethren? But what do the facts, then, if the pictures are so pernicious? No man can deny the positive truthfulness of these books. There is not an incident, there is not a sentiment, there is not a color in them, which is not perfectly true to life. And, even were it not so, the principle of the system they describe would necessarily cover them all. The melancholy truth is, that while nothing was said about slavery, at all, but a slow and vague admission that it was a misfortune, the system was extending itself, and rooting itself everywhere, until it was strong enough to say that it was no misfortune at all, but a great and mysterious missionary institution for the Christianization of the negro; and that the true principle of progressive civilization was, that capital should own labor, and that free society was a failure. That is the point it has reached, under the system of saying nothing about it. The present political and moral convulsion of the country springs out of our silence. If free society is a failure, then let us see the superiorities of slave society. Uncle Tom and Dred are the revelations of them. They show us the missionaries of this new institution in Legree and Tom Gordon, in Father Bonnie, Tekyl, and Dr. Cushman. They show us its chapels in the camp-meeting, in the slave-mart, in the Dismal Swamp. They show us its bands of converts in the slave-coffles. They show us its anxious seats in the whipping-post and jail. They show us its arguments in the overseers' whips. Are these only sad exceptions to the rule? Do you sincerely believe it? Why, then, is it a crime, within the pale of this missionary institution, to speak the word freedom? Why is it a crime to instruct the disciples? Why a crime to teach them to read? Why a crime to sell the books which they write, describing their own condition? Why are even women legally subject to do duty as patrols in the streets, to protect the peace of cities?

Gentle reader, it is not such books as

Uncle Tom and Dred that tend to foster unpleasant feelings between national brethren-it is the state of things which such books describe. If the whole slave country were like Nina Gordon's plantation, while she was mistress of it, there would be little comparative bitterness of feeling either in the relation or in its statement. Such books as Uncle Tom and Dred wage no war upon Nina, nor upon her relation to her slaves. They war only upon the system which, by making them her slaves, makes them, of course, the slaves of her brother Tom, when she dies. We cannot condemn such books. As spectators of the literary world, they fall under our notice. We find them full of power and pathos; we find that their statements are confirmed by statistics; we see what has come of not talking and writing about such subjects; and although, as good citizens, we ought to dwell at peace with our brethren, yet, as good citizens, we are bound to take care that it is not such peace as was secured in Warsaw or is maintained upon slave plantations.

-We have space to say only, of Miss WARNER'S Hills of the Shatemuc, that it is a novel which will increase the fame she won by the decided success of the "Wide, Wide World." It has many of the same characteristics with that, but fewer of the faults, and more of the merits. Like that, it is diffuse, and in parts dull; but like that, also, it betrays marked originality, vigor of conception, lively dialogue, and, occasionally, beautiful description. Nor

do we find in this work what was a recommendation to some, but an offense to us, in her former work-a too frequent and even violent introduction of pecul' vr religious sentiments. The piety of it is just as decided, but more lovely ; the characters have more breadth and variety; and the incidents, we think, managed with greater artistic skill. The friends of Miss Warner may congratulate her, in having sustained, by a second attempt, the unusual popularity achieved on her first appearance in the world of letters.

-The Last of the Foresters, by JOHN ESTIN COOK, is a story of the early frontier life of Virginia, and equal to the best of Mr. Cook's former writings. It is greatly superior to Ellie, though it has some of the same faults, particularly in the conversa

tions, which are merely ejaculatory or unmeaning. His descriptions, both of localities and characters, are full of animation, with a strong local flavor, and with now and then a touch of true poetic feeling. The Verty and Redbud, who are the principal personages of his drama, are a success, and leave a distinct impression, as well as a pleasant memory in the mind. Nor are the other figures destitute of verisimilitude and interest. The story itself abounds in incident.

-Perversion, by the Rev. J. CONYBEARE, shows the well-read scholar, the careful thinker, and the Christian man in the author, but not the excellent narrator. The object of the work is to illustrate the causes and consequences of infidelity-which is done well enough didactically, but there is a want of dramatic skill in the handling, and the purport of the whole is made too obvious to be consistent with a thoroughly sustained narrative. We can, however, recommend the work to all readers who would be improved, while they are entertained.

-In the Household Mysteries of LIZZIE PETIT, we have a romance of southern life, in which there is a pleasing development of incidents, and some sketching of character; but we do not recognize any striking originality in the performance in any respect. It resembles the late works of Marian Harland-has the same tone of sentiment, and general purpose--not highly exciting, and yet agreeable.

-Western Border Life is a sketch of society among the Border Ruffians, evidently by an unpracticed hand, written with great freshness of feeling, and a fine perception of character. It takes the form of an autobiography, and, though seemingly fictitious in part, has an air of truth, which assures us that it is drawn from experience. Any one who would understand the kind of life which is being forced upon our new territories, will get ample instruction in regard to it in this entertaining volume.