REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Lillian and Other Poems. By William Mackworth Praed. Now first Collected. New York: Redfield. 1 vol. 12mo.

Praed, one of the most brilliant, fanciful and peculiar poets of the century, has met with singular ill-luck in his native land in not finding either an editor or a public for the chance-offsprings of his sparkling muse. To Dr. Griswold belongs the credit of rescuing his pieces from oblivion, of collecting them in a permanent form, and of introducing them with a preface which presents, with condensed felicity of expression, the leading incidents of Praed’s life, and the subtle peculiarities of his genius. Poet, scholar, and politician, Praed was also a most popular and accomplished man of society, and not a little of the raciness of his poems consists in their curious combination of the romantic and the worldly. They suggest one of those modern parlors opening on one side into a greenhouse, with a strange blending in the atmosphere of musk and sweet-briar, eau de cologne and lilies. In such a forced union of the ideal and the conventional we are, of course, all the more piquantly reminded of their essential contrast. With all this clever deviltry, however, in the instinctive action of Praed’s mind, he has still given us some poems which indicate that a stout English heart beats beneath the embroidered waistcoat of the man of fashion, and will sometimes gush out in natural tenderness or passion. But his exquisitely nice perception of the falsehood of cultivated and conventual life, combined with a laughing charity for its pleasant hypocricies, commonly interferes with his poetic faith; and he is continually provoking sentimental readers by raising their serious sympathies only to give the greater force to the flush of sarcasm which dissolves them. This peculiarity springs, perhaps, from a deeper source than mere intellectual mischievousness, and refers to a humorous sadness of mood which is apt to characterize men who are both poets and wits—who see things at once in their ideal and conventional relations, and are fascinated by both. The observing reader will also detect, as a result of this, a certain fine misanthropy in the poems, but a misanthropy which is without malice or hatred. His description of the Troubadour, in his delicious poem of that name, may stand in some degree for his own portrait:

A wandering troubadour was he;

He bore a name of high degree,

And learned betimes to slay and sue,

As knights of high degree should do.

While vigor nerved his buoyant arm,

And youth was his to cheat and charm;

Being immensely fond of dancing,

And somewhat given to romancing,

He roamed about through towers and towns,

Apostrophizing smiles and frowns,

Singing sweet staves to beads and bonnets,

And dying, day by day, in sonnets.

Flippant and fair, and fool enough,

And careless where he met rebuff,

Poco-curante in all cases

Of furious foes, or pretty faces,

With laughing lip, and jocund eye,

And studied tear and practiced sigh,

And ready sword, and ready verse,

And store of ducats in his purse,

He sinned few crimes, loved many times,

And wrote a hundred thousand rhymes!

Among the best among the many good things in this volume is “The Belle of the Ball,” “The Vicar,” “The Legend of the Teuful-Haus,” “The Bridal of Belmont,” and “The Red Fisherman.” We have but space for a description of Richard Cœur de Lion—a fair specimen of Praed’s dashing manner:

A ponderous thing was Richard’s can,

And so was Richard’s boot,

And Saracens and liquor ran,

Where’er he set his foot.

So fiddling here, and fighting there,

And murdering time and tune,

With sturdy limb, and listless air,

And gauntleted hand, and jeweled hair,

Half monarch, half buffoon,

He turned away from feast to fray,

From quarreling to quaffing,

So great in prowess and in pranks,

So fierce and funny in the ranks,

That Saladin and Soldan said,

Where’er that mad-cap Richard led,

Alla! he held his breath for dread,

And burst his sides for laughing!

At court, the humor of a king

Is always voted “quite the thing;”

Morals and cloaks are loose or laced

According to the sovereign’s taste,

And belles and bouquets both are dressed

Just as his majesty thinks best.

Of course, in that delightful age,

When Richard ruled the roast,

Cracking of craniums was the rage,

And beauty was the toast.

Ay! all was laugh, and life, and love;

And lips and shrines were kissed;

And vows were ventured in the grove,

And lances in the list;

And boys roamed out in sunny weather

To weave a wreath and rhyme together:

While dames, in silence and in satin,

Lay listening to the soft French-Latin,

And flung their sashes and their sighs

From odor-breathing balconies.

The Howadji in Syria. By George William Curtis. Author of “Nile Notes.” New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Curtis has the finest genius for description among the myriad tourists of the day. His observation is clear, accurate and comprehensive, and the picture formed on his own imagination he can transfer to the imagination of the reader without the omission of a single detail. But he also has the poetic faculty of seeing not only the external form and colors of objects, but their inward spirit and meaning; and this makes his pictures alive with thought and feeling, and constitutes their peculiar attractiveness. The reader is literally transported; his eye falls on the page, and at once he is in Cairo or Jerusalem, not only seeing those places, but experiencing the pure and perfect luxury of the feelings they awaken in an imaginative mind. It is this magical power which places Mr. Curtis above all contemporary writers of travels. He has really caught the spirit of the east. Some London critics have objected to his book on account of its characteristic excellence, they being pleased to call his felicity and sureness of insight by the name of idealization, using the word to convey a charge of misrepresentation. We believe that he daguerreotypes both forms and emotions, and is equally true to fact and thought. His faculty of external observation is none the less accurate, because he has in addition the genius which most travelers lack.

We do not know whether Mr. Curtis would succeed as well in describing Western as Eastern life, manners and scenery. In the East he is at home, even the fanciful fopperies with which he pertinaciously bespangles his style, aiding the effect of his pictures. It may be that the sensuous and dreamy atmosphere through which he shows us the forms of Oriental life is native, not so much to his own mind, as the scenes he represents, and that he could vary it with a variation in his subject. If so, we hope he will not leave a corner of the earth unvisited, for such a representative faculty would make him the Shakspeare of tourists.

One of the most delightful pictures in the present volume is the “counterfeit presentment” of Oriental shopping. We quote it as a specimen of Mr. Curtis’s word-painting. The Howadji enters a bazaar:

“The merchant, gravely courteous, reveals his treasures, little dreaming that they are inestimable to the eyes that contemplate them. His wares make poets of his customers, who are sure that the Eastern poets must have passed their lives in an endless round of shopping.

“Here are silk stuffs from Damascus and Aleppo; cambric from the district of Nablus, near the well of Jacob; gold and silver threads from Mount Lebanon; keffie, the Bedouin handkerchiefs, from Mecca, and fabrics of delicate device from Damascus blend their charm with the Anatolian carpets of gorgeous tissue. The fruits of Hamas hang beyond—dried fruits and blades from Celo Syria—pistacchios from Aleppo, and over them strange Persian rugs.

“The eye feasts upon splendor. The wares are often clumsy, inconvenient, and unshapely. The coarsest linen is embroidered with the finest gold. It is a banquet of the crude elements of beauty, unrefined by taste. It is the pure figment unworked into the picture.

“But the contemplation of these articles, of name and association so alluring, and the calm curiosity of the soft eyes, that watch you in the dimness of the bazaar, gradually soothe your mind like sleep, and you sit by the merchant in pleasant reverie. You buy as long and as much as you can. Have rhymes, and colors, and fancies prices?

“The courteous merchant asks fabulous sums for his wares, and you courteously offer a tenth or a twentieth of his demand. He looks grieved, and smokes. You smoke, and look resigned.

“‘Have the Howadji reflected that this delicate linen (it is coarse crash) comes from Bagdad, upon camels, over the desert?’

“‘They have, indeed, meditated that fact.’

“‘Are these opulent strangers aware that the sum they mention would plunge an unhappy merchant into irretrievable ruin?’

“‘The thought severs the heart-strings of the opulent strangers. But are their resources rivers, whose sands are gold?’

“—And the soft-eyed Arab boy is dispatched for fresh coffee.

“We wear away the day in this delightful traffic. It has been a rhetorical tilt. We have talked, and lived, and bought poetry, and at twilight our treasures follow us to the hotel.”

Paris Sketch Book. By William M. Thackeray. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 18mo.

In these volumes the author of Vanity Fair appears as the social critic of Paris. With an eye that nothing ridiculous or bizarre can elude, he peers into the shady corners of French life, and transfers its oddities to his page. His English sense, it is true, is somewhat too constantly accompanied by his English prejudice; but even where he loses his fairness he never loses his brilliancy.

Among the many attractions of the book are some capital stories illustrative of French manners and character. Perhaps the best chapter is that on Louis the Fourteenth. Its exposition of kingship is mercilessly satirical and remorselessly just. There is a little wood-cut in this part of the book, which the revolutionists should distribute in every country in Europe as an instrument of insurrection. It represents first the royal robes, then royalty without the robes, then royalty in the robes. The inference to the eye is irresistible, that the robes and not the men constitute royalty. The satire is especially directed at Louis XIV., but it might with more justice be fastened on the present sovereigns of the continent of Europe.

The Study of Words. By Richard Cheverix French, B. D. New York: Redfield. 1 vol. 12mo.

This volume has been very popular in England, having passed rapidly through four editions. The author not only considers words as “fossil poetry,” but fossil ethics and fossil history. Many of his speculations are ingenious, tending to impress upon the mind the truth that language is the incarnation of thought, and that words are things. But in all that relates to the philosophy of the matter he is very inferior to one of our writers, the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, who, in his late theological writings has exhibited extraordinary depth and sentences of thought in demonstrating both the vitality and the limitations of language. Mr. French’s work is sketchy and readable, distinguished rather for the value of its detached remarks than for the comprehensiveness of its general plan. Its tendency, however, is to provoke independent thinking on the subject, in which Mr. French’s “Story of Words” may be disconnected from the languid wordiness of Mr. French.

The Works of Stephen Olin, D. D., LL. D., late President of the Wesleyan University. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vols. 1 and 2. 12mo.

An elegant edition, such as the present promises to be, of the works of so eminent a divine as the late Dr. Olin, is a contribution to theological and to general literature. The first and second volumes contain his Sermons, Lectures and Addresses. They are worthy of the author’s extensive reputation as an accurate and practical thinker, and are animated throughout with a tolerant but none the less kindling religious faith. In an age when charity is so common a screen of indifference, it is a refreshment to read an author whose toleration is the result of the depth and breadth of his religious feeling, and whose zeal is as intense as his mind is large. To young men, especially, these volumes are invaluable as guides in the practical duties of life, and the formation of a manly Christian character. Dr. Olin possessed, in no ordinary measure, that wisdom which comes from the union of exalted sentiment with sturdy sense, and his advice is therefore always elevated and always practical.

Claret and Olives; from the Garonne to the Rhone: or Notes Social, Picturesque and Legendary, by the way. By Angus B. Reach. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

This little volume, one of the series of Putnam’s Semi-Monthly Library, is altogether the most attractive book on the south of France we have ever read. It is written in a style of great liveliness and point, is full of vigorous descriptions of scenery and manners, and some of the legends are told inimitably. The series of volumes to which it belongs we cannot too cordially commend to the public. Taking into consideration the excellence of the type and paper, it is the cheapest collection of books ever published in the country, the price of each volume being but twenty-five cents. The cheapness, however, of the series is not so noteable as the rare taste which guides the selection of books. The present volume, “Claret and Olives,” is, in point of style alone, a work of high literary merit, and we cannot but think that its author will wake up some fine morning and find himself famous.

The English Family Robinson. The Desert Home, or the Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness. By Captain Mayne Reid, author of the “Rifle Rangers.” With Twelve Illustrations, by William Harvey. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 18mo.

This charming volume belongs to a class of works possessing universal interest. It narrates the trials and experiences of an English family lost in the great desert in the interior of North America. In this desert they discover a delightful oasis, and dwell on it for ten years. The descriptions of their housekeeping and hunting are exceedingly vivid, while there is just enough variety in the characters of the family to add a dramatic interest to the narrative. The volume is mostly devoted to exciting representations of hunting adventures, and we know of few books better calculated to convey to young persons a knowledge of natural history. The author evidently writes from personal observation both of the scenery and animals he describes.

Gaieties and Gravities. By Horace Smith. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 18mo.

Most of the pieces contained in this volume were originally contributed to the New Monthly Magazine, in the old days of that periodical, when it was edited by Campbell, the poet. Smith is now widely known as one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses,” and as the sole author of numerous admirable novels; but we doubt if any of his works show his genius and character in a light at once so amiable and so sparkling as they are exhibited in the present delightful volume. Full of curious information, brilliant satire, keen observation, and tingling wit, every sentence is a stimulant to attention. The essays on “Noses,” “Lips and Kissing,” “Ugly Women,” “The Eloquence of Eyes,” “The Literary Society of Houndsditch,” not to mention others, are radiant with fancy and wit.

Thorpe, A Quiet English Town, and Human Life Therein. By William Mountford. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 18mo.

Mr. Mountford is favorably known to thoughtful readers as the author of “Martyria” and “Euthanasy.” The present volume will add to the reputation he has already acquired by them, conceived as it is in the same kindly spirit, and admitting of a greater variety of incidents and characters. The whole representation of the town is exceedingly felicitous, combining considerable diversity of topic and subject with a pervading unity of impression. The most attractive portions of the book are the religious and philosophical conversations which are naturally interwoven with its homely incidents—conversations which are characterized by profound spiritual feeling, pure in tone, sweet in sentiment, full of original thoughts and suggestions, and expressed in a style of great clearness and beauty.

Life of Lord Jeffrey; with a Selection from his Correspondence. By Lord Cockburn. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.

We have read with great interest this admirable life of Jeffrey, from the pen of an intimate friend, who has performed his “labor of love,” in a most admirable and satisfactory manner. The great Edinburgh critic is presented to us in the character of a most amiable friend, and a profound, but somewhat timid statesman. He who put forth, through the “Edinburgh Review,” his fierce and remorseless criticisms of contemporary literature, is here pictured as the agreeable friend, the loving husband and father, and the honest censor of what he deemed pernicious in letters. He stands out from the canvas “a man of gentle amenities, full of all charity, profoundly impressed with the dignity and responsibility of his mission.” Every reader of Jeffrey should purchase these volumes to obtain a fair estimation of the worth and various ability of the man.

A Treatise on a Box of Instruments, and the Slide Rule: for the use of Gaugers, Engineers, Seamen, and Students. By Thomas Kentish. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird.

This invaluable little volume is a continuation of a series of useful works, for which the country is indebted to the enterprise of Mr. Baird; and we are mistaken if his efforts to extend the knowledge of the useful do not meet a very ample return. The title of the volume is sufficiently significant; and we have only to add, that the book is admirably adapted to fulfill its purpose.

The Waverly Novels. By Sir Walter Scott. Complete in 12 volumes. Abbotsford edition, vol. 1.—Waverly. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.

This beautiful edition of the Waverly Novels, has long been wanted by American readers, and the beautiful type and paper of this edition afford a most desired relief to the eye. The publishers announce that they have now ready, Guy Mannering—The Antiquary—Rob Roy—The Black Dwarf—Old Mortality—and The Bride of Lammermoor. The price per novel, in paper, is fifty cents.

Romanism at Home. Letters to the Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the United States. By Kirwan. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

These letters are the production of a vigorous and witty controversialist, who brings the full resources of a firm will, a clear understanding, and an animated rhetoric, to the task of assailing the church of Rome. It is a very stimulating book.

Hearts Unveiled; or, “I Knew You Would Like Him.” By Sarah Emery Saymore. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is what may be called a didactic novel; a kind of composition which we find it very difficult to read. It is, however, replete with shrewd remark, and contains many admirable maxims for the discipline both of the mind and the heart. The question of woman’s rights is very elaborately discussed in the volume, and a strong leaning manifested against the new ideas on that topic.

The Practical Model Calculator. By Oliver Byrne, Civil, Military and Mechanical Engineer. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird (successor to E. L. Carey.)

This is another of the series of very highly useful works with which we have been favored from the press of Mr. Baird, and one that will be of great service to the engineer, mechanic, machinist, naval architect, miner and millwright. It is prepared with great care and accuracy, and will be invaluable to all whose business or studies lead them to inform themselves fully of the subjects upon which it treats.