He appears to think himself justified in taking these liberties with the Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest of England, what is it, we may ask, that he calls upon us to believe? His skepticism, as so often happens, affords the measure of his credulity. He contends that Cortes, the greatest Spaniard of the sixteenth century, a man little acquainted with books, but endowed with a gigantic genius and with all the qualities requisite for success in warlike enterprises and an adventurous career, had his brain so filled with the romances of chivalry, and so preoccupied with reminiscences of the Spanish contests with the Moslems, that he saw in the New World nothing but duplicates of those contests,—that his heated imagination turned wigwams into palaces, Indian villages into cities like Granada, swamps into lakes, a tribe of savages into an empire of civilized men,—that, in the midst of embarrassments and dangers which, even on Mr. Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost, he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,—that, although he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative,—that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a different stage,—that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that of the Aztecs and yet so different from it, was, like that, the baseless fabric of a vision,—that the whole intellect, in short, of the sixteenth century was employed in fashioning a gorgeous fable, and that to this end continents were discovered, nations exterminated, countries laid waste, evidences forged, and witnesses invented. And this theory is to be swallowed in one solid and indigestible lump, unleavened with logic, unmoistened with grammar, unsweetened with rhetoric. Let those whose appetites are strong, and whose olfactory nerves are not too delicate, sit down to the repast.

For our own part, we are quite satisfied with the bare contemplation of the fare. Our readers, also, we suspect, have long ago been satiated. They have dropped off, one by one, and left us alone with our kind entertainer. What more we have to say must therefore be bestowed upon his private ear. We shall speak with the greater freedom. We know the exquisite pleasure we have given him. We are sure that he is not ungrateful. When his book comes to a second edition,—with a change of title-page corresponding to some change in the popular sentiment,—we shall have to submit to the same honors which he has inflicted on Mr. Prescott and "Rousseau de St. Hilaire"; he will reprint our article as "a flattering notice,"—as the "Atlantic Monthly's estimate of his researches." We beg to call his attention to our closing remarks, which, indeed, may serve as a digest of the whole. When he has "translated them into Indian phraseology," (we regret that we cannot save him this trouble,) and "reduced them to reality," we shall take our leave of him, not without a mournful presentiment that the separation is to be eternal.

There are many points of difference between his work and Mr. Prescott's "History of the Conquest of Mexico"; but the chief distinction, we think, may be thus stated. If the foundations on which Mr. Prescott's narrative is built should ever be overthrown,—a contingency which as yet we do not apprehend,—that narrative would still rank among the masterpieces of our literature. It could no longer be received as a truthful relation of what had actually happened in the past; but it would be received as a most faithful and graphic relation of what had been asserted, of what was once universally believed, to have so happened. If the reality appears strange, how much stranger would appear the fiction! The truth of such a story may seem improbable; the invention of such a story would be little short of miraculous. Prescott's work, if removed from its place among histories, must stand in the first rank among works of imagination,—must be classed with the "Odyssey" and the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."

But this book of Wilson's must, under all conditions, and in any contingency, be regarded as worthless. Be the story of the Conquest true or false, this contains no relation of it, this contains no refutation of it. Not content with vilifying his authorities, with impugning their faith, denying their existence, and mangling their names, he has disfigured their statements, corrupted their narrative, and substituted gross absurdities for what was at least beautiful and coherent, whether it was fiction or reality. His book is in every sense a fabrication. It is no record of the truth; it is not a romance or a fable, artfully constructed and elegantly told; it is—to use that plain language which the occasion authorizes and demands—a barefaced, but awkward falsification of history,—so awkward, that it has cost us little trouble to detect it,—so barefaced, that it has been a duty, though, of course, a painful one, to expose it.

Mothers and Infants, Nurses and Nursing. Translated from the French of A Treatise, etc., by DR. AL. DONNE, late Head of the Clinical Department of the Faculty of Paris, etc., etc. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1859.

When the young Count of Paris was at the tender age which requires the food that only mothers and their substitutes can supply, M. Donne, the author of this work, was called in consultation at the royal palace. He had a new way of examining milk through the microscope, and deciding upon its healthy and nutritive qualities or its defects, as the case might be. The whole world was full of the great question just then,—for the deep-bosomed dame of Normandy or Picardy who should be selected was to be the nurse not of a child only, but of a dynasty. So thought short-sighted mortals, at least, in those days,—little dreaming what cradle would be under the square dome of the Tuileries before twenty years were past!

M. Donne, as we said, was the man selected from all men for the task of choosing a nurse for the most important baby of his time. This is a voucher for his position at that period in the great medical world of Paris. He is known, also, to the scientific world by a number of treatises, with some of which we have long been familiar, as, for instance, the "Cours de Microscopic," with the remarkable Atlas copied from daguerreotypes taken by the aid of the camera. The present work is of a somewhat more popular character than his previous productions.

Little "Nursing" America is the father of Young America that is to be. And there is no denying that our new vital conditions on this side of the planet suggest some very grave questions,—such as these:—Whether there be not a gradual deterioration of the primitive European stock under these influences; and, Whether it is not possible that the imported human breed may run out here, so that, some time or other, the resuscitated tribes of Algonquins and Hurons may show a long shank of the extinct Yankee, as they show the Dodo's foot at the British Museum.

It is this contingency against which many intelligent and worthy persons are now trying to provide. The indefatigable Dr. Bowditch has made a map of this State of Massachusetts, showing the distribution of consumption in its different localities. That is the first thing,—where to live. We have been told an alleged fact with reference to a certain large New England town, which, if it were true, would raise the value of real estate in that place a million of dollars, perhaps, in twenty-four hours. We do not tell it, though mentioned to us by a celebrated practitioner and professor, simply because we are afraid it is too good to be true. At any rate, attention is beginning to be thoroughly awake as to the point of where we shall live. Now, then, how shall we live?

It is just as well to begin early. Infancy is too late. If men were dealt with like other live stock, a contractor might undertake to deliver at Long Wharf a cargo of three-year old human colts and fillies of almost any required standard of development and health, in five years from date. If only a cheap article were required, such and such parents would be selected; if the young animals were to be of prime quality, he must know it long enough beforehand, and be particular in his choice. This is plain speaking, but true,—as everybody knows, who studies the laws of life. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Given a half-starved dyspeptic and a bloodless negative blonde as parents, Hercules or Apollo is an impossibility in their progeny. Yet people look with infinite expectations of health, strength, beauty, intellect, as the product of $0 times {-1}$. The late Colonel Jaques, of the "Ten Hills Farm," knew ever so much better;—what a pity so much sound physiology should have been confined to "Caelobs," and "Dolly Creampot," and the likes of them!

Granted a sound, fair baby,—viable, as the French say,—liveable, or life-capable, and life-worthy. What shall we do with it?

A baby answers to the lively definition of an animal as "a stomach provided with organs." It lives to feed. It does not know much, but in its speciality it is unrivalled. The way in which it helps itself from the sources of life is a masterpiece of hydraulic skill. Once let it lose the Heaven-imparted art of haustion, and all the arts and academies of the world can never teach it again.

To manage this little feeding organism, with its wondrous instinct and capacity of imbibition, is the first great question after that of race is settled. Shall the mother's blood continue to flow through its fast-throbbing heart, and all the subtile affinities that bind the two lives be continued until reason and affection take up the chain where the link of bodily dependence is broken? Or shall it cleave no more to her bosom, but transfer its endearing dependence to a stranger, or learn to call a bottle its mother?

These are some of the questions learnedly, and yet familiarly, discussed in M. Donne's book. He has laid down many excellent rules for the physical and moral management of the infant, which the young mother can readily learn and put in practice. For the physician, his work contains many interesting facts with reference to the quality and the microscopic appearances of milk, as obtained from various sources and under different circumstances.

On one or two points our American experience would somewhat modify the rules commonly accepted in Paris. The nurse from the French provinces is evidently a different being from our Milesian milky mothers. So, too, the rules given by our own venerable and sagacious observer, Dr. James Jackson, as to the period of separating the infant from its mother or nurse, should be borne in mind, as laid down in his admirable "Letters to a Young Physician."

But there is a great deal of information applicable to children and their mothers in all civilized regions; and as we wish to start fair with the next generation, we are very glad to have so intelligent a guide for the management of our infant citizens.

Street Thoughts. By the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, Pastor of Pine-Street Church, Boston. With Illustrations by Billings. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1859.

If a profusion of introductory mottoes were any indication of the excellence of a book, this volume would be indeed a chef-d'oeuvre. On the page usually devoted to the Dedication, we have no less than six more or less appropriate quotations: a Greek one from Julian, a Latin one from Quintilian, a dramatic one from Shakspeare, a metrical one from Young, a ponderous philosophical one from Dr. Johnson, and a commonplace one from Bryant. In consideration of the number and learnedness of these certificates of character, we approach the lucubrations of the Reverend Mr. Dexter with profound respect.

In the days when controversial literature was fashionable in England, and the strife between Protestantism and Catholicism possessed some interest for the public, we remember with considerable amusement the manner in which the champions on either side conducted the attack. The Romish warrior would this month issue a formidable volume entitled "A Conversation between a Roman Catholic English Nobleman and an Irish Protestant." In this work the Roman Catholic lord had it all his own way; the Irish Protestant was accommodatingly weak in all his arguments, and the noble Papist battered him famously. But the Episcopal side was on hand next month with a volume entitled "A Dialogue between a Protestant Peer and an Irish Papist." Here the whole thing was reversed. The noble was still victorious, but he had changed his religion; and this time the Roman Catholic was feeble, and the Protestant stalwart. It is worthy of remark, however, that in both cases the nobleman was on the right side.

The Reverend Mr. Dexter thoroughly comprehends this ingenious method of attack. Does he, for instance, desire to impress upon the mind of his reader that it is in the highest degree criminal to wear kid gloves in the street, he, by a happy accident, encounters on his way to the office two persons conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers of the aristocrat, who would have the courage to reply? The feeble aristocrat is (very properly) discomfited, and the curtain falls amid applause from the gallery.

The reverend gentleman seems to combine with his talent for eavesdropping a most remarkable good-fortune in the contrasts afforded by the various interlocutors whose conversation he overhears. Whether he is in a shop, or an omnibus, or on the sidewalk, he is certain to encounter a foolish person and a sensible person (according to Mr. Dexter's idea of sense) discussing some important social topic,—such as, Whether dancing is criminal, or, Whether people should wear stove-pipe hats. At the end of the discussion, the reverend listener appears in a paragraph as the deus ex machina of the drama, pats the victorious sensible boy on the head, and treats the foolish boy with silent contempt. It does not take much to win Mr. Dexter's approval. He goes into rhapsodies over a rich man who insists on carrying home his own bundle; while another purchaser, who is villain enough to desire his parcel to be sent to his house, meets with all the scorn that he merits. Our author takes cheerful views of life. He goes into State Street, and, struck with the great crowds of people, asks the solemn question, "Whither are they going?"—"To the open grave!" is his jocund reply. He, in fact, sees nothing but a job for the undertaker in all the health and life by which he is surrounded; and a file of schoolboys out for a walk would doubtless to him be nothing more than the beginning of a procession to Mount Auburn. The shop-keepers should beware of Mr. Dexter. He is the avowed enemy of nice coats, kid gloves, silk dresses, fine houses, and his proof-reader knows what other et ceteras which ignorant people have been in the habit of looking on as commodities useful in helping trade, and consequently forwarding civilization.

We really thought that this shallow philosophy had completely died out, and that every educated person had been brought to comprehend the uses of Beauty and Luxury. Mr. Dexter's "Street Thoughts" is a silly proof that there are men yet living whose theory of social ethics may apparently be summed up thus: Live meanly, be afraid of God, and listen at keyholes.

The Mathematical Monthly. Edited by J.D. RUNKLE, A.M., A.A.S. Nos. I.-VII. October, 1858, to April, 1859. Cambridge: John Bartlett. 4to. pp. 284.

The title of Mr. Runkle's Monthly is much drier than its table of contents. He has aimed at interesting all classes of mathematicians, has introduced problems and discussions intelligible to scholars in our High Schools, and has also published contributions to the highest departments of the science. Educational questions have great prominence on the pages of his journal; he gives frequent notes upon the best modes of teaching the elementary branches, and proposes to publish in a serial form treatises adapted to use in the school-room. Every number of the "Monthly" contains five prize problems for students. Nor are its pages confined to topics strictly mathematical. The number for February introduces a problem by a quotation from Longfellow's "Hiawatha"; another gives a list of fifty-five of the Asteroid group, with their orbits, and the circumstances of their discovery. The March number explains an ingenious holocryptic cipher, written with the English alphabet, with no more letters than would be required for ordinary writing, yet so curiously complicated, that, while with the key easy to understand, it is without the key absolutely undecipherible, even to the inventor of the plan; and the key is capable of so many variations, that every pair of correspondents in Christendom may have their own cipher practically different from all others. In the November and December numbers, a popular account of Donati's Comet was given by Geo. P. Bond, then assistant, now chief director of the Observatory at Cambridge. This paper has been issued separately, very finely illustrated by twenty-one cuts, and by two beautiful engravings. No papers, readily accessible to the public, contain, in a form so entirely devoid of technicalities, and so clearly illustrated to the eye, so much information relative to the nature of cornels in general, and in particular to the phenomena of this most beautiful comet of the present century.

The purely mathematical articles are all original, many are of great value, and some are, to those who understand their secret meaning, peculiarly interesting. A note of Peirce's, for example, in the number for February, proposes two new symbols, one for the mystic ratio of the circumference to the diameter, a second for the base of Napier's logarithms,—and then, by joining them in an equation with the imaginary symbol, expresses in a single sentence the mutual relation of the three great talismans in the magic of modern science. Another article, in the April number, by Chauncey Wright, contains a new view of the law of Phyllotaxis, approaching it from an a priori stand-point, and showing that the natural arrangement of leaves about the stems of plants is precisely that which will keep the leaves most perfectly distributed for the reception of light and air.

We are glad to learn that a constantly increasing subscription-list, both at home and abroad, shows, not only that Mr. Runkle judged wisely in thinking such a journal needed, but also that the editorial office has fallen upon the right man.

Memoir and Letters of the late Thomas Seddon, Artist, By his BROTHER. London: 1858.

Associations are fast gathering round the English Pre-Raphaelites. Those that come with honors and with death already belong to them. A permanent influence is assured to the new school by a continuance of vigor, and by the space which it already occupies in the history of Art. This little volume is of interest as being the first of its biographies. Mr. Seddon attained no wide reputation during his life, but he left a few pictures of enduring value; and his early death was felt, by those who best knew his powers and purposes, to be a great loss to Art.

He was the son of a cabinet-manufacturer, and was born in London in 1821. After receiving a good school-education, at the age of sixteen he entered his father's work-rooms. He had already shown a decided love of drawing. He had a quick perception of beauty, and excellent power of observation. His disposition was serious, and his conscience sensitive; but he had a pleasant vein of humor, and a generous nature. After some years of irksome work, he was sent to Paris to perfect himself in the arts of ornamentation, and his residence there seems to have confirmed his taste for painting, to the practice of which he desired to devote his life. But for the next ten years he was engaged in business, giving, however, his evenings and his few vacations to the study and practice of Art, and becoming more and more eager to leave an employment which was wholly uncongenial to him. At length, in his thirtieth year, he was able to begin his career as a professional artist. His experiences at first differed but little from those of the common run of young painters; but his fidelity in work, his conscientious rendering of the details of Nature, and his sincerity of purpose, gave real worth even to his earlier pictures, and brought him into relations of cordial friendship with Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and others of the heads of Pre-Raphaelitism. After making a long visit, in company with Hunt, for the purposes of study, to Egypt and Palestine, and painting a few remarkable pictures, he returned home, and was married. Some months afterward he set out again for the East, but had hardly reached Cairo before he was seized with fatal illness. He died on the 23d of November, 1856,—just as he was grasping the fruit of years of labor and waiting.

The best part of the volume of memoirs is made up of Seddon's letters from the East. They exhibit his character in a most agreeable light, while, apart from any personal interest, they have a charm, as natural, vivid delineations of Eastern scenery and modes of life. He saw with a painter's eye, and he described what he saw clearly and vigorously, showing in his letters the same traits which he displayed in his pictures. Writing from his camping-ground on the edge of the Desert, he says,—"The Pyramids and Sphinxes, in ordinary daylight, are merely ugly, and do not look half as large as they ought to look from their real size; but in particular effects of light and shade, with a fine sunset behind them, for example, or when the sky lights up again, a quarter or half an hour afterwards,—when long beams of rose-colored light shoot up like a glory from behind the middle one into a sky of the most lovely violet,—they then look imposing, with their huge black masses against the flood of brilliant light behind."

Here is the first sight of Jerusalem:—"At length, about five o'clock, after expecting, for the last half-hour, that every hill-side we climbed would be the last, we came suddenly in full view of Jerusalem.—Few, I think, however careless, have looked for the first time on this scene, without some feelings of solemn awe. We read the accounts of all that passed within or around these walls with something of the vagueness that always veils the history of times that have gone by two thousand years ago; but however soon the feeling may wear off or be cast away, it is impossible, with the very spot before you where your Saviour lived and died, not to feel vividly impressed with the actual reality of what we have read of, and its intimate connection with ourselves.—But soon I was struck with the very erroneous idea I had had of Jerusalem. From the west it does not look at all like a city built on a hill; for, rather below you, at the farther end of a barren plain, you see nothing but the embattled walls of a feudal town, with one or two large buildings and a minaret alone visible above them. To the right the ground dips into the Valley of Hinnom,—but to the left it is level with the city-walls, and its surface is covered with bare ribs of rock running along it; and it is from this side that the Romans and Crusaders attacked. Behind the city, rather to the north, lay the Mount of Olives, and the long, straight lines of the Moab Mountains beyond the Dead Sea, stretching from horizon to horizon, half-shadowy and veiled in mist, through which they shone rosy in the evening's sunlight."

We have no space for further descriptions, excellent as they are. But we make one or two extracts relating more immediately to Art and to Seddon's views of the duties of an artist.

"I am sure that there is a great work to do, which wants every laborer,—to show that Art's highest vocation is, to be the handmaid to religion and purity, instead of to mere animal enjoyment and sensuality. This is what the Pre-Raphaelites are really doing in various degrees, but especially Hunt, who takes higher ground than mere morality, and most manfully advocates its power and duty as an exponent of the higher duties of religion."

"I hope I may be able to return to this place; for, to assist in directing attention to Jerusalem, and thus to render the Bible more easily understood, seems to me to be a humble way in which, perhaps, I may aid in doing some good."

Here is a portion of a letter written in England:—"The railway from Farnborough went through a most beautiful country,—by Guildford, Dorking, and Boxhill. While I was at Farnborough, on the bridge, sketching, a respectably-dressed man came up and touched his hat. After standing a minute or two, he said, 'So you are doing something in my line, Sir?'—'What!' said I, 'are you an artist?'—'Well, Sir, I cannot venture to call myself an artist, but I gets my living by making drawings. I makes 'em in pencil.'—I asked him if he took portraits.—'I does every line, portraits and all; but I don't get many portraits since the daguerreotype came in. No, Sir, my drawings are principally in the sporting line. I does portraits of gentlemen going over a fence or a five-barred gate. I does 'em all in pencil, and puts a little color on their faces, but all the rest in pencil,—d'ye see?'—'Yes; but do you make a good living?'—'Well, not much of that; I used to earn a good deal more money when I did portraits at sixpence each than I do now.'—I said, 'I suppose you begin to see that you can do better, and it takes you longer.'—'That's just it; you've hit it, Sir. I used to knock them off in a quarter or half an hour, and now it takes me seven or eight days to do a sporting piece.'—So I told the poor man that I would willingly give him advice, but I was afraid it would ruin him completely, for that afterwards he would have to take two or three months.—'Yes, Sir, I sees that; but I am too old now to learn a new line. But I find trees very hard; I can't manage them.'—So I sat down, and drew a branch of a tree, which he said was very much in his style; and I gave him some advice which I thought might help him, and the good man went away so much obliged."

When the news of Mr. Seddon's death reached England, it was at once felt by his friends that it was due to his memory that the public should be made better acquainted with the excellence of his works. An exhibition of them was accordingly made, and a subscription raised for the benefit of his widow, by purchasing his large picture of Jerusalem, to be presented to the National Gallery. The subscription was successful, and Seddon's fame is secure.

"Mr. Seddon's works," says Mr. Ruskin, "are the first which represent a truly historic landscape Art; that is to say, they are the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy,—being directed with stern self-restraint to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them. Whatever degrees of truth may have been attempted or attained by previous artists have been more or less subordinate to pictorial or dramatic effect. In Mr. Seddon's works, the primal object is to place the spectator, as far as Art can do, in the scene represented, and to give him the perfect sensation of its reality, wholly unmodified by the artist's execution."

Mr. Ruskin's judgment will not be questioned by those who have seen Seddon's pictures. But it might also be added, that such accuracy as he attained is by no means the result of mere laborious and conscientious copying, but implies and requires the possession of strong and well-balanced imagination.

We trust that the extracts we have given may lead lovers of Art to read the whole of the little volume from which they are taken.

Passages from my Autobiography. By SYDNEY, LADY MORGAN. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859.

Aged sportiveness is not seductive, and we do not become slaves at the tap of a fan, when the hand that holds it is palsied and withered. We have in the volume before us the melancholy spectacle of an aged female of quality setting her cap at everybody.

When an old woman makes up her mind to be young, she invariably overdoes it. The gypsy horse-dealers, when they have a particularly ancient horse to dispose of administer a nostrum to the animal, which has the effect of keeping him continually in motion, and bestowing on him a temporary vivacity which a colt would hardly exhibit. Lady Morgan is unnecessarily frisky. The gypsy's horse, when the effect of the medicine has passed off, becomes more aged and infirm than ever. What a terrible reaction must have been the lot of this old lady, after all the capers she had cut in these passages from her autobiography!

A great, great, great, long time ago, as the story-tellers say, when novels were few and far between, and an Irish novel was a thing almost unheard of, a smart, self-educated Irish girl, of, we believe, rather humble origin, discovered that she had a knack at writing, and, having published a cleverish novel, called "The Wild Irish Girl," was taken up by great people, exploited, made the fashion, and had Sir Charles Morgan, a physician of some standing, given her for a husband. She continued to write. Her work on France made some noise, on account of its having been prohibited by the French government; and her subsequent book on Italy, if not profound, was at least sprightly. Her Irish novels were, however, her best productions. There is considerable observation, and some feeling, displayed in them. Her knowledge of Irish society is very exact, and her pictures of it very slightly exaggerated. "The O'Briens and O'Flahertys" and "Florence MacCarthy" are, perhaps, the best of her works of fiction. At this period, Lady Morgan possessed a rather interesting appearance, great audacity, and a certain reckless style of conversation, which was found to be piquant by the jaded gossips of the metropolis. She was taken up by London society,—which must always be taking up something, whether it be a chimney-sweep that composes music, or an elephant that dances the valse a deux temps; and she fluttered from party to party, a sort of Tom Moore in petticoats,—with this difference, that Moore left his meek little wife at home, while Lady Morgan trotted her husband out after her on all occasions. It is amusing to observe what pains the poor woman takes to persuade us that Sir Charles is a monstrous clever man. Betsy Trotwood never labored harder to convince the world of the merits of Mr. Dick, than Lady Morgan does to obtain a place for her husband as a learned philosopher who was in advance of his age, or, as she prettily expresses it in French; (she likes to parade her French, this excellent wife,) "il devancait son siecle." This mania for inlaying her writing with French scraps rises with her Ladyship to a species of insanity. "Est il possible that I am going to Italy?" she exclaims. How much more forcible is this than the vulgar "Is it possible?" When the Duke of Sussex comes into a party, he does not excite anything so common-place as a great sensation; no,—it is a "grand mouvement!" Praise bestowed on her is an "eloge." She would not condescend to speak of such things as folding-doors,—they are better as "grands battants." A change of scene is a "changement de decoration." Mrs. Opie, whom she sees at a party, is not in full dress, but "en grand costume." The three Messrs. Lygon look very "hautain." And while driving with Lady Charleville, instead of having a charming conversation on the road, her Ladyship has it "chemin faisant." Allons, mi lady! you prefer that style of writing. Chacun a son gout! Mais we, nous autres, love mieux the plain old Saxon langue.

If Lady Morgan had called this volume "Passages from my Card-Basket," there would have been some harmony between the title and the contents. The three hundred and eighty-two pages are for the most part taken up with frivolous notes from great people, either inviting her Ladyship to parties or apologizing for not having called. These are interspersed with a number of philoprogenitive letters to Lady Clarke,—her Ladyship's sister,—in which, being childless herself, she expends all her bottled-up maternity on her nephews and nieces. The little pieces of autobiography scattered here and there are painfully vivacious. The poor old lady smirks and capers and ogles, until one becomes sick of this sexagenarian agility. Paris beheld no more melancholy spectacle than that of poor old Madame Saqui dancing on the tight-rope for a living at the age of eighty-five, and displaying her withered limbs and long white hair to a curious public. We do not feel any particular degree of veneration for that Countess of Desmond "who lived to the age of a hundred and ten, and died of a fall from a cherry-tree then," as Mr. Thomas Moore sings. Well, Lady Morgan dances on any amount of literary tight-ropes, and climbs any number of intellectual cherry-trees. It is a sight more surprising than pleasant; and her Ladyship must not be astonished that the critics should not treat her with the respect due to her age, when she herself labors so hard to make them forget it.

Bitter-Sweet. A Poem. By J.G. HOLLAND, Author of "The Bay Path," "Titcomb's Letters," etc. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street. pp. 220. 1859.

Unexpectedness is an essential element of wit,—perhaps, also, of pleasure; and it is the ill-fortune of professional reviewers, not only that surprise is necessarily something as rare with them as a June frost, but that loyalty to their extemporized omniscience should forbid them to acknowledge, even if they felt, so fallible an emotion.

Unexpectedness is also one of the prime components of that singular product called Poetry; and, accordingly, the much-enduring man whose finger-ends have skimmed many volumes and many manners of verse may be pardoned the involuntary bull of not greatly expecting to stumble upon it in any such quarter. Shall we, then, be so untrue to our craft,—shall we, in short, be so unguardedly natural, as to confess that "Bitter-Sweet" has surprised us? It is truly an original poem,—as genuine a product of our soil as a golden-rod or an aster. It is as purely American,—nay, more than that,—as purely New-English,—as the poems of Burns are Scotch. We read ourselves gradually back to our boyhood in it, and were aware of a flavor in it deliciously local and familiar,—a kind of sour-sweet, as in a frozen-thaw apple. From the title to the last line, it is delightfully characteristic. The family-party met for Thanksgiving can hit on no better way to be jolly than in a discussion of the Origin of Evil,—and the Yankee husband (a shooting-star in the quiet heaven of village morals) about to run away from his wife can be content with no less comet-like vehicle than a balloon. The poem is Yankee, even to the questionable extent of substituting "locality" for "scene" in the stage-directions; and we feel sure that none of the characters ever went to bed in their lives, but always sidled through the more decorous subterfuge of "retiring."

We could easily show that "Bitter-Sweet" was not this and that and t'other, but, after all said and done, it would remain an obstinately charming little book. It is not free from faults of taste, nor from a certain commonplaceness of metre; but Mr. Holland always saves himself in some expression so simply poetical, some image so fresh and natural, the harvest of his own heart and eye, that we are ready to forgive him all faults, in our thankfulness at finding the soul of Theocritus transmigrated into the body of a Yankee.

It would seem the simplest thing in the world to be able to help yourself to what lies all around you ready to your hand; but writers of verse commonly find it a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. Conscious that a certain remoteness from ordinary life is essential in poetry, they aim at it by laying their scenes far away in time, and taking their images from far away in space,—thus contriving to be foreign at once to their century and their country. Such self-made exiles and aliens are never repatriated by posterity. It is only here and there that a man is found, like Hawthorne, Judd, and Mr. Holland, who discovers or instinctively feels that this remoteness is attained, and attainable only, by lifting up and transfiguring the ordinary and familiar with the mirage of the ideal. We mean it as very high praise, when we say that "Bitter-Sweet" is one of the few books that have found the secret of drawing up and assimilating the juices of this New World of ours.

The Mustee; or, Love and Liberty. By B.F. PRESBURY. Boston: Shepard, Clark, & Brown. 12mo.

The plot of this novel is open to criticism, and we might take exception to some of the opinions expressed in it; but it is evidently the work of a thoughtful and scholarly mind and benevolent heart,—is exceedingly well written, shows a great deal of power in the delineation both of ideal and humorous character, and includes some scenes of the most absorbing dramatic interest. The character of Featherstone is admirably drawn, and Bill Frink is a positive addition to the literature of American low life. We commend him to our Southern friends, as an example of one of the most peculiar products of their peculiar institution. The author of the novel has lived at the South, and his descriptions of slavery display accurate observation, candid judgment, and a vivid power of pictorial representation. The scenes in New Orleans are all good; and in few novels of the present day is there a finer instance of animated narration than the account of Flora's escape from slavery. The incidents are so managed that the reader is kept in breathless suspense to the end, with sympathies excited almost to pain, as one circumstance after another seems to threaten the capture of the beautiful fugitive. Though the book belongs to the class of anti-slavery novels, it is not confined to the subject of slavery, but includes a consideration of almost all the "exciting topics" of the day, and treats of them all with singular conscientiousness of spirit and vigor of thought.

Rowse's Portrait of Emerson. Published in Photograph. Boston: Williams & Everett.

Durand's Portrait of Bryant. Engraved by Schoff & Jones. New York: Published by the Century Club.

Barry's Portrait of Whittier. Published in Photograph. Boston: Brainard.

Almost one of the lost arts is that of portraiture. Raised by Titian and his contemporaries to the position of one of the noblest walks of Art, and in the generations following depressed to the position of minister to vanity and foolish pride, it has remained, during the most of the years since, one of the lowest and least reputable of the fields of artistic labor. The lost vein was broken into by Reynolds and Gainsborough, who left a golden glory in all they did for us; but no one came to inherit, and in England no one has since appeared worthy of comparison with them. In all Europe there is no school of portraiture worth notice; the so-called portrait-painters are only likeness-makers, comparing with the true portraitist as a topographical draughtsman does with a landscape artist. The intellectual elements of the artistic character, which successful portraiture insists on, are some of its very greatest,—if we admit, as it seems to us that we must, that imagination is not strictly intellectual, but an inspiration, an exaltation of the whole nature. To paint a great man, one must not merely comprehend that he is great, but must in some sense rise up by the side of, and sympathize with, his greatness,—must enter into and identify himself with some essential quality of his character, which quality will be the theme of his portrait. So it inevitably follows that the greatness of the artist is the limitation of his art,—that he expresses in his work himself as much as his subject, but no more of the latter than he can comprehend and appreciate.

The distinction between the true and the false portraitist is that between expression of something felt and representation of something seen; and as the subtilest and noblest part of the human soul can only be felt, as the signs of it in the face can be recognized and translated only by sympathy, so no mere painter can ever succeed in expressing in its fulness the character of any great man. The lines in which holiest passion, subtilest thought, divinest activity have recorded in the face their existence and presence, are hieroglyphs unintelligible to one who has not kindled with that passion, been rapt in that thought, or swept away in sympathy with that activity; he may follow the lines, but must certainly miss their meaning. A successful portrait implies an equality, in some sense, between the artist and his original. The greatest of artists fail most completely in painting people with whom they have no sympathy, and only the mechanical painter succeeds alike with all,—the fair average of his works being a general levelling of his subjects; the great successes of the genuine artist being as surely offset (if one success can find offset in a thousand failures) by as absolute and extreme failure.

As regards portraiture in general, the public may, without injury to Art or history, employ the painters who make the prettiest pictures of them; it doesn't matter to the future, if Mr. Jenkins, or even the Hon. Mr. Twaddle, has employed the promising Mr. Mahlstock to perpetuate him with a hundred transitory and borrowed graces,—if the talented young litterateur, Mr. Simeah, has been found by his limner to resemble Lord Byron amazingly, and has in consequence consented to sit for a half-length, to be done a la Corsair, etc., etc.; but for our men of thought, for those whose works will stand to all time as the signals pointing out the road a nation followed, whose presence and acts shall be our intellectual history,—it is of some little moment that these should be given to us in such visible form, that men shall not conjecture, a thousand years hence, if Emerson were really a man, or a name under which some metaphysical club chose to publish their philosophies. In psychological history, portraits are as necessary as dates; and one of the most valuable gifts to an age is a great portrait-painter,—a Titian, a Gainsborough, a Reynolds, or a Page,—which last has more of the Titianesque character than any one who has painted since the great Venetians lived, and few, indeed, are the generations so endowed.

Beside this full insight and representation of character, which makes the ideal portraiture, we have the less complete, but only in degree less valuable, apprehension which results from a point of sympathy, a likeness of liking in one or more fields of thought, a common sensitiveness, a common interest; and the rarer sympathy between artist and subject, of that intimacy and complete understanding of personal character, which, even where no great talent exists in the artist, gives a unique value to his work, but which, where the intimacy is that of great minds, gives us works on which no dilettanteism, even, makes a criticism,—as in that portrait of Dante by Giotto, to our mind the portrait par excellence of past time.

In the three admirable portraits whose titles stand at the head of our notice, we have in one way and another all of the conditions we have spoken of fulfilled. Rowse's portrait of Emerson is one of the most masterly and subtile records of the character of a signal man, nay, the most masterly, we have ever seen. Those who know Emerson best will recognize him most fully in it. It represents him in his most characteristic mood, the subtile intelligence mingling with the kindly humor in his face, thoughtful, cordial, philosophic. The portrait is not more happy in the comprehension of character than in the rendering of it, and is as masterly technically as it is grandly characteristic. An eminent English poet, who knows Emerson well, says of it, justly,—"It is the best portrait I have ever seen of any man"; and we say of it, without any hesitation, that no living man, except, perhaps, William Page, is capable, at his best moment, of such a success.

In Barry's portrait of Whittier it is easy to see the points of contact between the characters of the artist and the poet-subject, in the sensitiveness shown in the lines of the mouth in the drawing, in the delicacy of organization which has wasted the cheek and left the eye burning with undimmed brilliancy in the sunken socket, the fervent, earnest face, defying age to affect its expressiveness, as the heart it manifests defies the chill of time. It is an exceedingly interesting drawing, and one by which those who love the poet are willing to have him seen by the future. It must remain as the only and sufficient record of Whittier's personnel.

In the portrait of Bryant we have the results of an intimacy of the most cordial kind, of years' duration,—an almost absolute unity of sentiment and similarity of habits of regarding the things most interesting to each. Of nearly the same age, Bryant and Durand have grown old together, loving the same Nature, and regarding it with the same eyes,—the painter catching inspiration from the poet's themes, and the poet in turn getting new insight into the mystery of the outer world through the painter's eyes. Bryant's face has been a Sphinx's riddle to our best painters; none have succeeded in rendering its severe simplicity, and clear, self-disciplined expression, until Durand tried it with a success which renders the picture interesting evermore as a tribute of friendship as well as a solution of a difficult problem. The artist's hand was directed by a more than ordinary understanding of the lines it drew; it has not varied in a line from reverence for the verisimilitude the world had a right to insist on; it has not flattered or softened, but is simply, completely, absolutely, true. Bryant's face has an immovable tranquillity, a reserve and impassiveness, which yet are not coldness; the clear gray eye calmly looks through and through you, but permits no intelligence of what is passing behind it to come out to you. It is such a face as one of the old Greek kings might have had, as he sat administering justice. All this, it seems to us, Durand's picture gives. It looks out at you impassive, penetrating, as though it would hear all and tell nothing,—a strong, self-continent, completely balanced character,—unshrinking, unyielding, yet without being unsensitive,—concentrated, justly poised, and intense, without being passionate. The head is admirably engraved, though we do not at all fancy the way in which the background is done; it is heavy, formal, and unartistic,—but this may be matter of choice.



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