conventional rule, from an assortment of incidents which had been used before. The value of the work is in its detailed, truthfal delineations of New England life; which are very creditable to Mr. Roe's observation.

*

-The History of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the Colony to the adoption of the present Constitution, by G. H. HOLLISTER, is a work to be completed in two volumes, of which the first is just issued. It is handsomely printed, and is enriched with accurately engraved portraits of several of the famous men of Connecticut, Gov. John Winthrop, Rev. John Davenport, Ezra Stiles, General Putnam, Jonathan Edwards, Oliver Wolcott, and others. The work is not only invaluable to every son of Connecticut, but it is the most interesting recent contribution to our history,-since all local history is part of the national history. The author says his "main object, in undertaking the work, was to turn the attention of the descendants of the Connecticut emigrants from the present to the glorious past. Indeed, no state, since the fall of Lacedæmon, has ever, in the history of the world, waged so many wars in the same number of years, with equal success, or voluntarily borne such heavy burdens as Connecticut." And when it is remembered how much of the charm and romance of early New England history, and the fierce Indian wars, had for its scene the placid valley of the Connecticut; that there Putnam was born and lived, and Edwards preached; that it was the land of blue laws, and the most ascetic Puritanism, of the Regicides and the Hartford Convention, and it will be seen at once how important and ample, how various and picturesque the material is, and we could hardly praise the work more than to say, that the material has found a worthy workman, and the historic traditions a shrewd and genial chronicler.

The present volume brings the history down to the capture of Lewisburg, in the old French War. It deals, not only with the political and religious affairs of the Colonists, but presents careful and graphic pictures of old Colonial life and manners, with a penetrating and discriminating analysis of the old Connecticut character. It is a comprehensive and exhaustive survey of Connecticut society, in every aspect, from the settlement of the State. And if

a similar history of every State were prepared, with the same intelligence, appreciation, and ardor, the task of the national historian would become an easy and grateful labor.

The style of the narrative is sometimes quite too ambitious, but the excess is easily to be traced to that enthusiasm of the author for his subject which best fits him to treat it well. He maintains stoutly the side of the Yankees against the Knickerbockers, but, on the whole, he seems to us to do justice to all parties, even if, with national jealousy, he is impatient of our good Diedrich Knickerbocker's estimate of "the losel Yankees."

We shall await with great interest the appearance of the second volume, which will contain, we learn, a careful examination of the connection of General Putnam with the battle of Bunker hill. And we cannot but congratulate our neighbors, that their history of the State has fallen to the pen of a scholar who adds to the accuracy of the chronicler the imagination of the poet.

-BURNHAM Sounds like Barnum, and Mr. Burnham has written a book which reads like the book of Mr. Barnum. In subject, style, and end, they are as like as two peas; i. e., as like as a big pea and a little pea. Mr. Barnum made money by woolly-horses and Fejee mermaids, and Mr. Burnham made money by Shanghai chickens.

Mr. Barnum writes a book about the way in which he did it, and Mr. Burnham writes another book about the way in which he did it. Both practiced a little delusion on the public, and both are proud of it; and both have resolved to let the public know what ninnies they were. The difference is, that Barnum is the more genuine humbug, or the Simon Pure of Humbugs; while Burnham is only an imitator. Barnum has the merit of originality, but Burnham has no merit whatever. He only follows in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. He is a pinchbeck copy of a a pinchbeck model. He is the sneaking Jacques Strop striving to put on the large and free manner of Robert Macaire-a miserable long-legged, befeathered, and oppressed-looking Shanghai, decking himself in the gay plumage of the peacock, and chattering like a parrot. He is funny, of course: Barnum was irresistibly funny; and so Burnham must be deadly-lively.

He chuckles over the adroitness with which he allowed the public to deceive itself,-to buy real imported Cochin-Chinas reared at Roxbury, and to pay twenty dollars a dozen for eggs, as if he had endowed the public with the royalest favors. He pretended to sell chickens all the time that he was only selling geese; and his morality is, that if the geese were silly enough to be sold, he might as well have the profits of the bargain as any other rogue. It is pretty certain that the public will be cheated, and it is better for you and I to cheat them, than Tom, Dick, and Harry. We shall cheat them more scientifically than those vulgar knaves, we shall do it with a sly laugh in our sleeve, but they with fear and trembling; we shall make a joke out of it, as well as a living, but they only a living, and that a poor one, ending at SingSing.

Mr. Burnham heads one of the chapters of his book (which is entitled The History of the Hen Fever, as we ought to have said before) with the motto, that "Policy is the best Honesty," and we have no doubt that it is the best he knows. He seems to think that if one can feather his nest, like one of his own Dorkings or Bantams, he has done all. There is no virtue and wisdom beyond that. And yet, let us tell Mr. Burnham, and all who would do like him, that it is not very great, or wise, or noble, or sagacious, or even cunning, to take in a fool. Here is an extract from a letter addressed to him by one of his victims,-a man who paid twenty-six dollars for three fowls:

"i bred them orl by themselves an never had no other cockrill on my plase, an i no yu cheeted me like the devl, an yu no it 2."

Surely, it is not a very difficult or glorious thing to have deluded a fellow such as this letter indicates,-a thing to write a book about, and call upon the world to admire. Some crimes have an air of magnificence about them, but robbing a henroost, or picking the pocket of an idiot, or misleading a very old countrywoman in a very large city, is not of this class.

It is curious in the history of swindles, that the adepts should all aim at Queen Victoria, as if she were the prime hen of all to be plucked. Why is it that they all apply to Buckingham Palace for passports? Barnum paraded Tom Thumb before royalty, and Burnham got a portrait

from the Queen for his fowls; but who will be the next favorite?

It may seem beneath our while to notice such books as this; but such books are getting to be common in our literature, and it is time that they were stopped.

-MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE has just sent forth a Primary Geography, which is spoken of by practical teachers as a very judicious one, clearly arranged, and welladapted to juvenile instruction. It differs in plan from other geographies, inasmuch as it begins with the town in which the learner is supposed to live, teaching him all about the geography of that, and then advancing gradually to the county, the state, the nation, the continent, and finally the world. The old way was to begin with the world, and come down to the town, or, in other words, to descend from generals to particulars. Mrs. Stowe ascends from particulars to generals.

-The New Pastoral, by THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, (Philadelphia: Parry and McMillan) is a poem, in thirty-seven books of blank verse. It treats of the homeliest incidents of Western Pennsylvanian life, of twenty or thirty years ago, in the homeliest manner. The Husking, the Fourth of July, the common-place and the rural charm of the country, all have their praise and their careful description. The poem has the same scope as Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, and a prolix minuteness like Thomson's Seasons. The happy and unhappy loves of village girls and youths, however, do not afford incident or variety of passion enough for 249 pages. The landscape and festival descriptions do not seem accessory to the human interest of the poem, but they supersede it. The pastoral, as it is the most fascinating, so it is the most difficult style, to treat well. It tends to monotony and dullness, and only a very masterly genius can withstand these tendencies, and by the cunning play of its resources make a graceful and complete poem. Mr. Read's work is, in one sense, complete. It touches, with varying power of description, all the aspects of American rural life. So far, it is curious, and will be always interesting to the historical student. But it nowhere kindles the reader's mind with sympathy, or the exquisite sense of entire mastery. The New Pastoral is tedious, and we doubt if many, who begin with the first page, will persevere, much

less be irresistibly swept on, to the two hundred and forty-ninth. A work of the kind here attempted might well be the work of a life, and would be quite sufficient for a permanent reputation. American rural life offers no less material for the great poet than English, or German, or Italian. But The New Pastoral is not the poem which will be cherished in solitary cottages, and scanned by delighted farmers as the poetic picture of their life. It is written with sincerity and feeling: there are descriptions which have great truth of detail, and the poem has the great merit of a subdued and natural tone. There is no strain after something fine. It is often crude, but rather in thought than in manner. On the whole, we should call it a work by which Mr. Read will maintain, but will hardly enhance, his reputation. In entering the field of descriptive pastoral poetry he finds Bryant, Lowell, and Street before him. But his various works evince a resolution to do something, and to do it well, and we see no reason why Mr. Read should be the least in any field where he chooses to labor.

-SYDNEY SMITH, in his review of Madame D'Epinay's Memoirs, says, "There used to be in Paris, under the ancient régime, a few women of brilliant talents, who violated all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers." Of the same class, in London, according to general report, was the late Lady Blessington-and this report was true, so far as the brilliant talents and the little suppers are concerned. A woman of remarkable beauty, of graceful manners, charming conversation, and the kindest heart, her house-which shone with all the splendors of a palace, chastened by the refinements of artistic taste-was the resort of the most distinguished authors and wits of her time. The names of her intimate friends and admirers recall many of the brightest in the politics, the literature, and the arts of the last half century. Among them, for instance, are such as Byron, Landor, Moore, the two D'Israelis, the two Bulwers, the two Smiths (Horace and James), Lord Lyndhurst, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Holland, Henry Erskine, Dr. Parr, Lord John Russell, the Prince Soutro, Hospidar of Moldavia, William Godwin, Fonblanque, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thos. Campbell, Galt, Reynolds,

Landseer, Maclise, Haydon, Wyatt, Eugene Sue, Casimir Delavign, Alfred de Vigny, Mlle. Rachel, Emile de Girardin, Louis Napoleon, Chorley, Macready, Barry Cornwall, the Mathewses, Milnes, Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving, N. P. Willis, etc., etc.; not forgetting Baboo Dwarkanouth Tagorè, the celebrated Hindoo, and America Vespucci. Her saloon, though less powerful in its social influence than that of Madame De Stael, and in some respects less brilliant than those of Madame Geoffrin and Lady Holland, must take its place among the most intellectual known to history. As a reunion of wit and genius, it was deficient only in one direction -the want of women. We do not find there, as in the other assemblages we have named, and in the dazzling salons of Mlle. Contat, Madam Recamier, Lady Charleville, the beauty which is the inspiration of both wit and genius. The Countess of Blessington, with an occasional female friend from the continent, and her nieces, were the sole divinities: but what is society, however brilliant, without the presence of its most enduring and tender charm? The deficiency, however, was one of choice, on the part of the Countess, and not of necessity, as some have alleged, to her disadvantage. Among her correspondents were many distinguished women, such as Mrs. Hall, Mrs. Sigourney, Lady Canterbury, etc.

What a fine life was that of the Countess of Blessington! some will, perhaps, exclaim. Beauty, wealth, fashion, admiration, luxury, fame, genius, travel, art-all were hers! But no, dear reader, it was not a fine life-even if there had been no Death at the feast. Life, to be really fine, must have other objects than these,-higher aims than such successes-and better lights than the flashes of wit. Look behind it, into the naked facts of it, and how much of it is sad and hideous? Lady Blessington, whose maiden name was Power, was the daughter of a rollicking, murderous Irishman, bankrupt in fortune, character, and domestic happiness, who ought to have been hung, but was not. In her fifteenth year she was married, against her will, to a half-crazy Captain, whom she was obliged to desert in a few years, and who subsequently died in a drunken frolic. Her second husband, the Earl of Blessington, though an accomplished man, to whom she

was attached, was a used-up, extravagant lord, who wasted immense estates in selfindulgence, and compelled his daughter, not fifteen years of age, to marry Count D'Orsay, whom she had not seen till within a few weeks of the ceremony, and from whom she shortly separated. On the death of the Earl she lived in magnificent style in London, with her son-in-law, the Count, as a companion, harassed by debts, though her income for most of the time could not have been less than twenty thousand dollars a year, until the entire establishment was sold under execution, and she and the Count were obliged to take refuge in Paris. She died in comparative poverty-though not deserted-and the Count soon followed her, the victim of disappointment and Louis Napoleon's ingratitude. Now, that is not a fine life! That is not a great success! The Countess, however, appears to have ben a person of noble and generous disposition, passionately beloved by all who knew her (as the fine tribute in Landor's recent letter shows).

Her Memotrs, by Dr. MADDEN, recently re-published by the Harpers, is a book of absorbing interest, though perfectly unpardonable in its free use of private letters. It tells the story of the Countess's literary life with fidelity, and in a sympathizing tone. The letters in it, from eminent men, are mostly on personal topics, full of compliments and mutual admiration, but are entertaining--especially those of Landor, Dickens, Mathews, and Sir William Gell. But the most amusing are several by Viscount D'Arlingcourt, a French nobleman and writer, who combines as much aristocratic hauteur with authorial conceit as can easily be imagined. The supreme disdain with which he speaks of the bookseller, (whom he wishes to print a translation of one of his works,) and his avaricious anxiety to drive a good bargain, at the same time, are ludicrously contrasted. A sentence in one of the letters written to Lady Blessington in Paris, after the auction sale of Gore House, by one of the domestics left behind, will suggest a thought or two :--"Le Doctor Quin est venu plusieur fois, etc. M. Thackeray est venu aussi, et avait les larmes aux yeux, en partant. C'est peutêtre la seule personne que j'ai vu réelement affecté en votre depart." Think of the picture. The cold, -stern satirist, as he is called, the big,

burly, true-hearted man, as he is, amid the ruins of that splendid mansion, the only one of all its former joyous crowds, with tears in his eyes! We are sure we shall read the next number of the "Newcomes" with additional zest.

-In St. Domingo, its Revolutions and its Hero, by C. W. ELLIOTT, we have a brief but spirited and deeply interesting account of the career of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the liberator of St. Domingo. After an allusion to the history and condition of the island up to 1789, when the first insurrection of the slaves took place, the author passes to the personal character and conduct of Toussaint Breda, who afterwards took so important a political part. Mr. Elliott describes the incidents of his career with bold and startling effect; and, by a remarkable power of condensation, presents a complete picture of varied and protracted action, in a few touches. His'style, however, is wanting in simplicity at times, particularly in passages which appear to have been suggested by the spasmodic Carlyle.

Professor JOHN DARBY, of Auburn, Alabama, has prepared a Botany of the Southern States, which is presented to Colleges and High-schools as a text-book. In the first part, the leading principles of ve getable anatomy and physiology are presented in a concise form, with a variety of wood-cut illustrations; and in the second, a descriptive classification of all the plants of the Southern States is given. As far as we are able to judge, the book is wellexecuted and complete.

REPRINTS.-Mr. Calvin Blanchard has reproduced in this country the English translation, by MARIAN EVANS, of FEUERBACH'S celebrated work called "The Essence of Christianity." It ought to have been called the "Essence of Infidelity, or Naturalism the true Religion," for it is one of the most audacious attacks on all religion that we have read-audacious and yet puerile. Feuerbach occupies, in common with Strauss, (not he of the fine waltzes, as an English periodical laughably asserted,) and Bruno-Bauer, the extreme left of Hegelianism in Germany. Strauss, in his "Life of Jesus," endeavors to explode the historical verity of Christianity, Bruno-Bauer its biblical evidences, while Feuerbach completes the circle, by an assault upon Christianity in general. The peculiar stand-point of the latter, given

out with much apparent philosophical precision, is this, that all religion is the mere projection into objective existence of the inward thoughts and emotions of the hu man being. Man is distinguished from the brutes by the simple fact of self-consciousness, by his ability to make his species, his essential nature, an object of thought. He possesses, consequently, a two-fold life, an inner and outer life, the first having relation to his species, or to his general nature, and the second to his individual nature. But this inner life seems to him always infinite, and outer life only is finite or limited. His self-consciousness, consequently, is essentially infinite. The power of will, the power of thought, and the power of affection, which constitute this self-consciousness, are infinite powers and are the ground and substance. of all religion; considered as objective existences, these three-fold powers are Godthe Trinity. The consciousness of the object and self-consciousness, coincide and are one. Religion is the relation of man to himself, to his own subjective nature; but a relation to it viewed as a nature

apart from his own. The divine being, so called, is nothing else but the human being freed from the limits of the individual man, or made objective, and contemplated and revered as another or distinct being.

It will be seen that this is naturalism run to seed, or rather naturalism carried out to its extreme and legitimate expression. Starting from the doctrine-too generally accepted, we fear, both in the Church and the world—that man is the source of his own life,

"Himself, his world, and his own God,"

it ends with the denial of the Infinite Goodness and Wisdom as the living and substantial source of all life..

There is some truth in Feuerbach's statement that men make their own God,-that in the heroic times, he is the God of Battles, to the Jew a narrow and avenging Deity, to the martyr a sympathetic sufferer, to the devout monk a larger Pope, and to the speculative thinker, like Hegel, as Menzel says, a pedant on the throne of the Universe; but these errors of former, and even of the present time, need not obscure our conceptions of Him, as he is declared to be in Revelation, or as he is loved and revered by the regenerate heart.

Human opinions are all subject to progress and change, but the absolute and the eternal, in which alone our thoughts and affections can rest, ceases to be the absolute and eternal, when we conceive of it, not as self-subsistent, but as the mere projection of our own nature.

-The Banking-House, by SAMUEL PHILLIPS, is a short story, singularly and rather roughly constructed. Its situations and events spring from the efforts of Michael Allcraft, the Banker, to preserve the business reputation and pay the debts of his father, Abraham Allcraft, who, though reputed enormously rich, died insolvent. In these efforts, Michael is thwarted by the villainy of one of his partners, and the follies of the two others; and the various excitements prepared for the reader, which are all painful, are founded upon the narrative of the terrible efforts of the unhappy and overmatched man, the successively deeper miseries into which he falls, and his death, when broken in health and reputation, and penniless. His sorrow is aggravated by remorse for having borrowed all his wife's large fortune, to repair his successive losses, and by her prospective poverty. She at last finds refuge in a country parsonage, and in doing good. The remaining characters are left to hang themselves; at least, they are entirely unaccounted for. The book is well written, but must, apparently, either have been very hastily composed, or have been much cut down and compressed for insertion in the periodical where it first appeared; insomuch that it does not adequately show its author's power. The use of significant names, too openly significant, as in many other novels, destroys all the illusion of the story. When we read of a cunning miser named Allcraft, of a projector named Planner, we cannot read, in the truthful and pleasant, appropriate delusion, that there were such men. Names of this kind should only be used in professed allegory.

-Fabiola; or, the Church of the Catacombs, by His Eminence CARDINAL WISEMAN, is a Roman Catholic religious novel, which treats of events supposed to have happened at Rome, in the first half of the fourth century, during the persecutions under Dioclesian and Maximian. For Protestant readers it has little interest, except as a literary curiosity. It is a book of the same class with Amy Herbert, and