water with drops of my own blood, from whence comes this magnificent red colour, and there are yet other conditions heavier than these. "I have bound my body and soul so firmly to him there is now no possible redemption. And know you what the niggard gave me for it? 100,000 gold pieces a year. This is too little, and for that reason I will buy your 'gallows man,' that I may play the old curmudgeon a trick. He has my soul fast, and now the little black devil shall come back without winning one more soul to Hell. This will make the green dragon curse." At this he laughed so loud that the rocks re-echoed it, and even the motionless black horse appeared to join. Now," said he again turning to Richard,"companion, do you bring the half farthings?" man.' | NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. THE PRELUDE; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind. An Autobiographical Poem. By William Wordsworth. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1850. The peculiar admirers of Wordsworth have long known, from the preface to the Excursion, not only that that poem was designed as a portion of a more extended work, but also that the author had already written the introduction to that work, as well as other parts of it, besides the Excursion itself. "Several years ago," wrote Wordsworth, in 1814, "when the author retired to his native mountains, with the hope of being able to construct a literary work that might live, it was a reasonable thing that he should take a review of his own mind, and examine how far nature and education had fitted him for such employment. “As subsidiary to this preparation, he undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of his own pow ers, as far as he was acquainted with them. That work, addressed to a dear friend, most distinguished for his knowledge and genius, and to whom the author's intellect is deeply indebted, has been long finished." The friend here alluded to is Coleridge, who has transcribed his feelings with regard to it, and the author's recent death has given to the public this introductory poem in the volume now under consideration. "The Prelude," is a history, in fourteen books of un The red man seemed vexed to think he had had the unnecessary trouble of a conflict with the monster-then he changed a good farthing pretending and easy blank verse, of the mental developfor three of Richard's bad ones, and gave one of ment and education of a poet. The author exhibits a these to Richard in exchange for the gallows very close adherence to this idea throughout the whole, nor is he ever led away to describe scenes and events not essential to the formation of his intellect, however intiAgain the buyer laughed loudly. "Thou canst mately connected with his personal experience. "The not help it, Satan. Now gold here, as much as Prelude," therefore, will be apt to prove a tedious volume, my black horse can carry." Soon the monstrous we fear, to all but genuine Lakers in their poetical taste. animal groaned under his heavy burden, then he Autobiographical reading in blank verse is at best but dry took his master up and went straight over the provender, but when the writer is eminently self-reflective and gives whole passages of metaphysical inquiry,rocky wall, high up the perpendicular rocks as moreover, when that writer is William Wordsworth, whose if he was flying, but yet with such terrible con- lines flow on in the same tranquil current, in omne volutortions and motions, that Richard went into the bilis avum,—it will require a Wordsworthian indeed to cavern to avoid seeing any more. When he smack his lips over the repast and offer up a “grace after meat." For ourselves, schooled, as we are, into a geneagain came out, on the other side of the mounrous appreciation of the beauties of the bard of "Rydal tain, the wholly happy feeling of freedom filled Mount," by long acquaintance with, and careful study of his soul, he felt that he had done penance for the his earlier works, we must confess that more frequent desins of his youth, and that the gallows man' could scriptions of scenery and events in The Prelude would no more belong to him. In the fulness of his have pleased us better than so much consciousness and joy, he lay on the green grass, caressed the flow-introspection. The book contains very many lines that ers, and kissed his hand to the sun. are flatly and hopelessly prosaic, often long passages of such; it lacks, too, the fire of that poetry which “brighteyed fancy" utters, when she An entirely light heart beat again in his breast, butnot, as formerly, light from thoughtlessness and frivolity. Though he might have boasted of outwitting the devil himself, he did not boast-but preferred to devote his whole youthful strength to leading a useful and honorable life. In this he succeeded so well, that, after a few years, he returned a successful merchant to his own coun- The versification of Wordsworth, like that of Cowper try-married a wife, and often the happy grey- and Crabbe, is at times but little more than disjointed headed old man told his children and grand-prose, and might be successfully imitated by breaking children the story of the cursed gallows man,' as a useful warning to them. Scatters from her pictured urn Thoughts that breathe and words that burn but it has nevertheless glorious strains, which we cannot but regret that the author should have kept back, nearly half a century, from mankind. into lines of ten syllables any well-written essay on moral philosophy. The Bourgeois Gentilhomme expressed his great surprise that he had been speaking prose forty years of his life without knowing it. The essayist, who | should try the experiment we have suggested and find his thoughts poetry, would doubtless manifest as great astonishment as M. Jourdain. The third and fourth books describe his "Residence at Cambridge," and his "Summer Vacation." Our pure and simple poet seems to have been little at his ease in the roystering circles of "the Evangelist, St. John," his paBut, lest the disciple of Wordsworth accuse us of irrev-tron, and passed unassoiled through the temptations of erently discussing the merits of one who is far above the college-life. Once, he confesses, in pouring out libations in reach of praise or blame,-niched in the great temple of Milton's lodge to the memory of the great bard, his brain song but a little lower than the master of all, "with his singing robes about him"-let us hasten to do homage to his shade by culling from the "Prelude" a few of its choicest sweets. We shall thus evince our gratification at having enjoyed them, and vindicate ourselves from the charge of insensibility to genius. The first two books are taken up with the author's "Childhood" and "Schooltime," and are full of exquisite passages. The earliest associations of his boyish days are thus introduced: Ah! better far than this, to stray about Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour Was it for this That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved A tempting playınate whom we dearly loved. "grew dizzy," and he describes with charming naireté the condition of booziness. "The Vacation" came as a delightful relief to his over-tasked energies, and his quiet joy in finding himself again among his native streams and mountains is beautifully pictured in the following lines— Those walks well worthy to be prized and loved- While on I walked, a comfort seemed to touch A heart that had not been disconsolate: Strength came where weakness was not known to be, Remembered less; but I had inward hopes I turned my head to look if he were there; The next and last passage we shall quote, is strikingly self-reflective, but is perhaps one of the finest things in the book Nor less do I remember to have felt, A pensive feeling! It spread far and wide; The trees, the mountains shared it, and the brooks. Whatever imports from the world of death Were, in the main, of mood less tender: strong, As one who hangs down-tending from the side Of a still water, solacing himself With such discoveries as his eye can make Sees many beauteous sights-weeds, fishes, flowers, And wavering motions sent he knows not whence, To lure my mind from firm habitual quest And damp those yearnings which had once been mine- We should like to pursue our notice of the "Prelude" into an analysis of the entire poem, to follow the author on his journey to the Alps, to abide with him in London and in France, to run over his reflections on the French Revolution and enjoy again the sweet and lofty poesy of his concluding thoughts. We should like to quote from all these, the most striking passages, because we are persuaded that very many who would read and enjoy them in detached sentences, will be deterred by prejudice against the Lake School of Poetry, from arriving at them in the book itself. But out limited space forbids us to do so, and we must reluctantly dismiss "The Prelude" with the expression of our decided conviction that, however unequal in execution it may be, it will last as long as any, even of the noblest efforts of William Wordsworth. HISTORY OF DARIUS THE GREAT: By Jacob Abbott; with engravings. New York. Harper & Brothers. This is another of the series of popular Histories by the same author. It is a pretty and very readable volume, in proof of which we affirm, upou our veracity, that we read through its 286 pages at one sitting. The book, if it does not deserve the name of a history, at least contains interesting selections from the history of the early times, and great personages and events, of which it treats. It is a sweet morsel for the mental palate, that imparts a wholesome hunger for more. It is well suited to the youthful mind or the mass of the people; but though well enough written to satisfy even the fastidious taste of the scholar, it is not for him sufficiently profound. He loves to drink history from her original fountains, knowing that there it is fresher if not purer, and if the fountain itself be impure, he loves to filter it for himself. Or, if he is content to have that labor done for him by others, he goes to those master chemists, who have proved their skill in separating the true from the false, the historical from the fabulous,-such as Heeren, Arnold, Prescott, &c. What a strange delusion it is, that makes the people of our day and generation spend their precious time, and eyesight, and intellect, in reading every thing that is called a novel, whether good, bad, or indifferent, although there are twenty bad or indifferent for one that is good,-when the works, from which truth and knowledge are to be gathered, are far more interesting as well as more useful. What work of fiction is more entertaining than the historical narratives of that honest and simple-hearted, but it may be over credulous, old chronicler Herodotus? What novel so thrilling and so soul-stirring, as the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, that paragon of historians? What novellette, or "moral tale" of the present day, will compare in dramatic interest with this little history of Darius? Yet the book does not do justice to its great themes. In reading, for example, the account of the great battle of Marathon, we have but a bird's eye view of it,-no adequate idea is given to us of the patriotism, skill, and valour of the Greeks, and the wisdom with which their great commander made his preparations and chose his ground for the combat. Again we bid the students of history and lovers of classical lore "petere fontes,"drink deep" of the Picrian spring. But if you are more fond of the agreeable than the profound, still mingle a little of the useful with the sweet; if you will not read the Bible, Tacitus, Thucydides, Heeren, Arnold, &c., at least read Irving, Macaulay, and kindred writers, in preference to the heavy light reading of Cooper, James, Mrs. Gore, Dickens, et id omne genus. Let us not however be misunderstood. All history is not equally useful, nor is all fiction useless. In a certain sense, there is history that is false, and fiction that is true. Much that pretends to be history is not really so, i. e.is not true; and much even of true history records events strange, unnatural, and beyond all probability. So on the other hand the masters of fiction adhere generally so LANY: Crosby & Nichols. Boston. closely to the laws of physical and moral nature in their | THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER AND RELIGIOUS MISCEL creations, that their books are as instructive as if they were true. Thus we know and feel that Shakspeare is true, not in his history of events, but in his delineation of the human heart and its passions; and that Walter Scott is truthful in the romances from his pen, which have afforded and ever will afford so much delight to the family fireside. We have already had something to say about the readers and the venders of that sort of light literature which distils a moral poison wherever it goes,-a literature of which Eugene Sue, and the woman who writes under the name of George Sand, are now the burning and shining lights, but which did not begin with them. This work sustains its well established reputation. The September number of this year presents an attractive table of contents, and some clever articles under the heads of Literary and Religious Intelligence. We cordially agree with the following remarks, provoked by the notoriety of a certain Dr. Achilli; who, upon the strength of an alleged conversion from the Church of Rome, and an unsparing denunciation of the Catholics, had been much caressed by certain zealous Protestants in England. "Previous experience, too, has over and over again warned us to beware of noisy apostates and converts, of RURAL HOURS: By a Lady. New York. George P. wandering proselyters, and lecturers against their former Putnam. 1850. A very charming book from the pen of a young lady. It is a pleasant chronicle of incidents and employments in the country, with the observations of the authoress thereon. It contains nothing very original or striking: but exhibits the natural, and at the same time refined, tastes of a lady, with a fair share of reading and thought, and a sound healthy tone of sentiment and opinion. The copyright being secured by J. Fennimore Cooper, and the book inscribed to the author of the "Deerslayer," it is no rash conjecture to assume that the work is his daughter's. We bespeak for her a favorable reception at the hands of our fair readers, who will find her well deserving of it. The following passage (page 172) is especially worthy of commendation in these days of agitation for "Female Rights" brethren or religious communion. We have had them on this side of the water, and we avoid them. They invari ably show a bad spirit! and; if they are not actually burdened with disgrace, they seldom, harm their former brethren so much as those who adopt them. A very different course and demeanor befit a sincere convert. His very experience will have humbled him, and taught him gentleness and dignity of thought, modesty of behaviour, and forbearance of speech. If he was ever a sincere dis ciple of the fold which he has left, some of his heart-strings will yet and always cling to it, and friends among the living and the dead will make his memories of it to be tender." The reviewer adds—“The Dublin Review gives us from authentic documents, and from police records, a complete history of the so called Dr. Achilli, who has no claim to the title which he assumes. He was ordained a priest of the Roman church, and all that the Roman Inquisition ever had to do with him was to deprive him of all his functions, because of his most flagitious conduct in repeated acts of seduction and crime. He is proved to be utterly unworthy of credit, a very base and bad man, and a most unquestionable impostor." "We American women certainly owe a debt of gratitude to our countrymen for their kindness and consideration for us generally. Gallantry may not always take a graceful form in this part of the world, and mere flattery may be worth as little here as elsewhere; but there is a glow of generous feeling toward woman in the hearts of most American men, which is highly honorable to them as a nation and as individuals. In no country is the protection given to woman's helplessness more full and free-in no country is the assistance she receives from the stronger arm so general-and nowhere does her weakness meet with more forbearance and consideration. Under such circumstances it must be woman's own fault, if she be not thoroughly respected also. The position accorded to her is favorable; it remains for her to fill it in a manner worthy her own sex, gratefully, kindly, and simply; with truth and modesty of heart and life; with unwavering fidelity of feeling and principle, with patience, cheerfulness, and sweetness of temper-no unfit return to those who smooth REMINISCENCES OF CONGRESS: by Charles W. March: the daily path for her." Read that, ye brazen apostles of what ye call "the rights of woman"-ye, who frequent mass meetings, and delight to parade yourselves before the public-ye, who glory in tumults, and rejoice when your violent language and behaviour provoke the applause, or the resentment, of the mob to whom ye speak! Read-and if not yet totally unsexed, let the truth, which she utters from the sweet, womanly instinct of her heart, find entrance into yours, and purify them. not at all ourselves mean to question-the sincerity and We do not understand the reviewer to deny-as we do faith to another, even the most opposite. But we discredit piety of thousands, who have passed from one religious the existence of such qualities, in company with vindic tive hatred and rancorous abuse of former friends and associates. Converts of this character in religion bear too the rat in politics-and the felon, who turns state's evistrong and unpleasing a likeness to the deserter in wardence against his accomplices. Baker & Scribner. New York. 1850. We are indebted to Messrs. Morris & Brother for this well written and spirited book. Its title is a misnomer; but it is not the less agreeable and instructive. It is a rapid sketch of the life of Daniel Webster, with no other 'Reminiscences of Congress" than the figures which filled up the background of the picture, on some of those memorable occasions, when the great statesman “stood like a tower" among men, who would have been giants We should be glad to copy many other and longer pas- elsewhere. Making some small allowance for the parti sages from the abundant variety of Miss Cooper's work:ality of a biographer, we have no fault to find with it, as and especially, by way of showing that she is not blind it regards Mr. Webster. But we think the author has to the faults of the "nobler sex," the capital satire (pages 298, 299,) upon the "faint praise" with which men too often "damn" the culinary attempts of their housekeepers, while they extol the unapproachable excellence of "the pie of five and twenty years ago." done less than justice to others. While he does not di rectly assail Mr. Clay, he more than once makes insinuations, which, if credited, would detract greatly from the sincerity, the fearlessness, and the noble elevation of his character. But he deals with the memory of John Quincy Can any one tell us what is the Phabe bird, of which Adams in a spirit that is not merely harsh, but ferocious and she speaks, on pages 16 and 66 ? pitiless. We are not insensible to Mr. Adams' faults especially to that bitterness of feeling, which, in his later | well, is indicated chiefly by the depth of his appetite; not years particularly, was the source of so much vexation the recommendable kind of man! A man full of pruriand mischief. Southern men are not apt to view him in a ent elements from the first: which at the last through his light too favourable. But nevertheless we cannot but long course, have developed themselves over the family suspect and we think there are few who will differ with of mankind into an expression altogether tremendous," us-that there is something of violent prejudice, if not of &c., &c. hatred, in the delineation of Mr. Adams by our author. We cannot believe him to have been a man utterly and Mr. Carlyle's expression of Loyola is indeed "altothoroughly selfish-cold and unfeeling towards every one gether tremendous," as his expressions commonly are. else without human sympathy-without a single fixed His style of persuasion reminds us of a zealous person principle or honest opinion-ungrateful for every kindness whom we once heard of, and his attempt to establish a shown, or honor conferred upon him-and ready to betray | free school in a rude western settlement. Presenting himwhoever trusted and supported him, for the prospect of self where the backwoodsmen were shooting for beef, he new benefits to be obtained at the hands of new allies. interrupted the sport, and insisted that they should forthSuch a monster as this is held up by Mr. March, and pro- with hear him and embrace his proposals. One of them claimed to be the likeness of Mr. Adams. We repeat de- told him bluntly to come another time, for they were busy. liberately that we do not believe it to be true. We know "What!" cried the apostle of education, "; you d-d ignothing of Mr. March, or his possible relations to the norant savage! do you want your children to grow up as man, whose tomb he thus dishonors; but if there be no great brutes as yourself?" Thereupon, the "ignorant secret wound, no personal wrong, in the case, then his savage" knocked him down: and he complained to a spontaneous rancor is more to be wondered at, than friend a few days after, that he had been cruelly beaten, for merely proposing to establish a school in the neighborhood. Like Mr. Carlyle, he had only been "trying to speak the truth to them." envied. LATTER-DAY PAMPHLETS. No. 8. Jesuitism. Another instalment of jargon-one more pamphlet full of uncouth phrases and fantastic ideas-the only discoverable point of which is, that there is no truth in the world—" that no man speaks the truth to you or to himself, but that every man lies-with blasphemous audacity, and does not know that he is lying-before God and man, in regard to almost all manner of things." AN ADDRESS, delivered before the Society of Alumni of The author of this address is the same gentleman who has acquired a wide celebrity by a pamphlet entitled "The Union, Past and Present, How it works and how to We have long since ceased to look at Carlyle's pam- save it," which we noticed some time since. We had the phlets, except for amusement. This, we do sometimes pleasure of hearing this effort delivered, and while we diffind in the singularly absurd combinations, into which fer very widely with the author in some of the positions he tortures the King's English, and the comical conceits he assumes, very especially in his belief that the freewhich he dresses up in his rag-carpet fabric. He ad- school system is but an offshoot of socialism-yet we cor dresses now his busy English readers, about to betake dially commend the address to the reader as a most felithemselves to "their autumnal grouse shooting-the ra- citous rhetorical performance, abounding in beauties of madhan, sacred fast, or month of meditative solitude and composition, and evincing the most enlarged scholarship. devout prayer, now in use among the English." And The fact is, Mr. Garnett is a scholar that is a scholar. anon he appeals after this fashion to his fellow-creatures, We speak of him knowingly, when we declare that no the Catholic priests-" Prim friend, with the rosary, scap-young man in this country is more profoundly imbued ulary, and I know not what other spiritual block and tac-with the love of learning or has evinced greater proofs of kle, scowl not on me. * Listen to me, for I swear classical attainment. His views of slavery are somewhat thou art my brother, in spite of rosaries and scapularies; ultra, we think, and we cannot accede to them; placing and I recognize thee, though thou canst not me; and with that institution, as we do, on the impregnable ground that love and pity know thee for a brother, though enchanted it is a part of the framework of our society, which rude into the condition of a spiritual mummy.” hands should not assail but at their peril, without attempting to show, as Mr. Garnett does, that it is the root and source of every moral and political good. Nevertheless, we cannot but admire the ingenuity with which his views are put forth, and we are quite of his opinion that in the present crisis, the institution of slavery is of great social advantage to the Southern States. Having secured by this flattering accost, a favorable hearing from his "prim friend with the spiritual block and tackle," he thus proceeds to delineate Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and a canonized saint in the Romish calendar THE LIFE OF SILAS TALBOT, a Commodore in the Navy of the United States. By Henry T. Tuckerman. New York: J. C. Riker, 129 Fulton Street. 1850. "Of Ignatius, then, I must take leave to say, there can this be recorded, that probably he has done more mischief in the earth than any man born since. A scandalous mortal, O brethren of mankind who live by truth and not by falsity, I must call this man. Altogether, here where I stand, looking on millions of poor pious brothers reduced to spiritual mummyhood, who curse me because I try to This little volume was originally designed as one of speak the truth to them, and on a whole world canting the series of American Biography, edited by Jared Sparks. and grimacing from birth to death, and finding in their That work having been suspended, the author was indulife two serious indubitabilities, Cookery and Scrip-how, ced by the solicitation of Mr. Sparks himself to publish if he is the representative and chief fountain of all this, it in its present form. It is a charming narrative, and does can I call him other than the superlative of scandals? A justice to the memory of a gallant officer who served his bad man, I think; not good by nature: and by destiny country well. Our readers, who are familiar with Mr. swollen into a very Ahriman of badness. Not good by Tuckerman's style, need not to be told, that it is beautinature, I perceive. A man born greedy; whose great-fully written, or that the author has worked up the events ness in the beginning, and even in the end if we will look of the Commodore's Life in an admirable manner. We |