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John Brent. By THEODORE WINTHROP. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. AFTER the fatal battle with the unharmonious name of Big Bethel was fought, the public ear was filled, and the public heart warmed with the courage and heroism of the only man present in that disastrous bungle who escaped the imputation of fool or coward. Theodore Winthrop had been waiting, in accordance with his favorite theory that the time of action would come to every man if he would only bide patiently, and seize and make the most of his opportunity when it offered; he was found no longer waiting, but up and ready, when the call to arms roused him and his 70,000 brother heroes. What he did in the short time that preceded the end, how he fought and how he fell, are gloriously known throughout the whole land. It is not our business, though it might well be our pleasure, to follow and describe him on the march and in the field. The second of his posthumous literary works lies before us. If he is widely known and honored as a patriotic soldier, his books merit, in our opinion, scarcely less universal recognition and praise. Not for what they are so much as for what they would have been had the author lived to revise, to improve, and remodel them. He would not trust his memory, as he might well and safely have done, to that admiration and love which his country is always ready to proffer to the dead who die for her sake. His name is preserved to us besides in his books. Their faults are many and glaring. It would be easy even for so unexperienced a critic as we to expose and hold up many faults, many blemishes. The book before us, John Brent, contains many. It abounds in too much that is sensational, too much that is slang, too much that is improbable. It lacks concentration, ease, and finish, but it is full of energy, enthusiasm, and nobleness, and it does not lack, but is rich in promise of better things in the future, with increasing age and experience. Its heroes have no blemishes and its villains no redeeming traits. Time and thought would have erased all these blots, and would have brightened all these excellences. But time and age in this world were denied to him. Let us take his unfinished productions as they are, and, while admiring, try to imagine what they might have been. What is most admirable in the man is his entire consistency. From some mouths, rhapsodies on courage and heroism, enthusiastic praise of bodily strength and endurance, would come with a poor grace, or at least we should be unpleasantly reminded that all those fine words were but the utterances of a weakling, who goes into raptures over the very traits that he himself most lacks. But with our noble and lamented author the case is quite different. We quote a passage, for which a dozen parallels may be found in the same book. "Who says that knighthood is no more? Who says the days of chivalry are past? Who says it,

is a losel." Who says it, indeed! The author has nobly silenced all doubters on that score by his own knightly and heroic death.

This book is worth reading, well worth it. Some descriptions of scenery and adventure are good, are excellent. Shut your eyes to, or charitably overlook, some faults, and there are parts of this work worth remembering, worth repeating, worthy of the author, if he had lived, in his matured fame.

Margret Howth. A Story of To-day. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1862.

STORIES of "To-day" are becoming rather more common in our lists of novels. Novelists and their readers are beginning, perhaps, to feel that it may be somewhat of an anachronism to go back to classical, feudal, or mediæval times to find material for a good, stirring story. They are beginning to think that, perhaps, between their love for back centuries and their curiosity for the future, "to-day" is getting crowded out, — that it is hardly just to become so excited over a passage-of-arms two or three hundred years ago, and abandon the interesting battle for daily bread and butter to newspaper annalists alone. "To-day" is not so bad after all, — you will hear it said, perhaps even an improvement on classical times. What old Rome considered a rubbish-heap has become to-day a large green-clad height, with the sounding name of Testacio.

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Thus very much of the intense interest with which Winthrop's books have been read may be accounted for by considering that the author was most emphatically one of us, that the scenes were in the midst of us, and the time "to-day." So with Margret Howth, a story which even dates itself with no hesitancy in the sixties of our own century,— a story which even sketches the secessionist and his doctrines, the latest growth of our nation, and "to-day." It is laid in a Western factory-town, and is made up of just such opposites as our vulgar American life" brings together so often, — a hero stopping to count the cost in dollars and cents before he falls in love, a heroine who, if necessary, can become a factory accountant instead of the wife and mother she might have been. But the hero has enough of the heroic to lose sight of the dollars and cents at last in the strength of his love, and the heroine enough of natural womanhood to accept the love, and resign the unnatural course of life she was beginning. And a Christmas the day that brought love into the world-heals all the book's discontents. Its reader cannot help being interested in a story so full of action and life, discerning and describing characters and things with so much originality, notwithstanding it has less of the smell of powder than copperas about it, — less of "once upon a time” than “to-day.”

To those and there are many-who refuse on principle to read in monthly bits the novels which appear in our magazines, this book of two hundred and fifty pages will supply a serious loss which they have suffered in passing the story over in the pages of the "Atlantic."

Leisure Hours in Town. By the "Country Parson." Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

UNDER this title we are presented with another volume of Essays by the author of the "Recreations of a Country Parson." This new series is very much like its predecessors, if we except a slight abruptness in style and an apparent greater haste in composition, which remind us that the country parson has become a city clergyman. The great charm of these essays lies in their simplicity; even at the first reading we seem to recognize an old friend; we are perpetually meeting with little things which we are sure have presented themselves to us before, and we are pleased at the coincidence, and take an interest in pursuing them farther. We find it hard to remember that it is the author who is developing these old thoughts, and to be persuaded that he has not rifled the sweets from our own small store of ideas, in a word, the essays are entirely on a level with the simplest comprehension.

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One perusal is enough; a second would probably be found tedious. The author is correct when he tells us "that there are few people who can beat out thought so thin, or say so little in such a great number of words." He certainly repeats himself not unfrequently, and occasionally contradicts in one essay what he has advocated in another. Still he makes no pretension to anything striking or original, and aims merely at supplying that "diluted thought" which his friend, the great prelate, informed him " was desirable for the consumption of many minds."

The "Essay on Veal," with several others, was published in the Atlantic. We would advise all who enjoyed those, to take up the present volume; they will find the moral and metaphysical reflections of a novel without the plot.

COLLEGE RECORD.

Ar meetings of the Senior Class held on the 10th, 11th, and 12th of March, of which Charles B. Stoddard, of Plymouth, was chosen Chairman, and Joseph S. Reed, of Boston, Secretary, the following Class Officers were elected:

ORATOR: Charles E. Grinnell, of Baltimore, Md.

POET: John R. Dennett, of Woburn.

ODIST: Edward D. Lindsey, of Cambridge.

CHIEF MARSHAL: Henry H. M'Burney, of Roxbury.

ASSISTANT MARSHALS: W. H. Chadbourn, of Wilmington, N. C.; Henry P. Quincy, of Dedham.

CHAPLAIN: Edwin A. Lecompte, of Boston.

CLASS-DAY COMMITTEE: Henry U. Jeffries, of Boston; Arthur Reed, of Boston; Charles B. Stoddard, of Plymouth.

CLASS SECRETARY: William T. Brigham, of Boston.

CLASS COMMITTEE: George E. Chapman, of Cambridge; William Hedge, of Plymouth.

CLASS CHORISTER: Charles B. Porter, of Rutland, Vt.

Class-Supper Officers.

PRESIDENT: Charles Boyden, of Cambridge.

CLASS-SUPPER COMMITTEE: Shepard D. Gilbert, of Boston; John

Reed, of Cambridge.

CHORISTER: Charles J. Coleman, of Cincinnati, O.
ODIST: Nathaniel A. Prentiss, of West Cambridge.

CHRONICLER: Murray R. Ballou, of Boston.
TOAST-MASTER: Henry M. Rogers, of Boston.

OBITUARY.

AT a meeting of the Senior Class, March 12th, the following resolutions were adopted on occasion of the death of President Felton:

Whereas, It hath pleased Almighty God to remove from among us our late honored President and friend,

Resolved, That we sincerely deplore the irreparable loss to the cause of liberal learning in the death of him who had demonstrated that a profound

and generous culture is by no means inconsistent with popular sympathies and a practical character.

Resolved, That the University has been deprived of a finished scholar and a conscientious officer, and the students of a thoughtful guardian and an earnest friend.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be presented to the family of the deceased, as an assurance of our profound respect for his memory.

At a recent meeting of the Junior Class of Harvard College, the following resolutions were adopted :

Whereas, Almighty God in his divine pleasure has seen fit to remove by death the President of the University,

Resolved, That we have thus been deprived of one whose character as a man, a Christian, and a scholar had secured our heartfelt respect and affection, and whose devotion to the best interests of the University and its members we shall ever hold in grateful remembrance.

Resolved, That we desire to share in the common acknowledgment of the loss which the College and the community have alike sustained in the death of President Felton.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to the family of the late President as an expression of our sincere and lasting respect for his memory.

Ar a meeting of the Sophomore Class of Harvard College, held on the morning of Saturday, the 15th inst., the following resolutions were unanimously adopted:

Whereas, In the Providence of Almighty God, Cornelius Conway Felton, the honored President of our University, has been removed from among us,

Resolved, That with deep regret we recognize the loss which the cause of liberal education and social progress has sustained in the death of a promoter so zealous and devoted as the late President Felton.

Resolved, That while we join in the general expression of sorrow at his departure, yet, as members of the first class that entered the University under his administration, we feel that his removal is a loss peculiarly our

own.

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to the family of the deceased, as an expression of our sympathy with them in their deep affliction.

Resolved, That these resolutions be published in the papers of the day.

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