Part 2 — REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

The Child of the Sea and Other Poems. By Mrs. S. Anna Lewis, Author of “Records of the Heart,” etc. etc. New York: George P. Putnam.

A large edition of “Records of the Heart” was sold in a few months, and the fair author stepped at once into a very enviable position. “The Child of the Sea,” etc. will add much to her poetical fame. The poem which gives name to the volume, and occupies most of it, is a romantic and passionate narrative, and embodies all the main features of Mrs. Lewis’s thought as well as manner. The story is well conducted and somewhat elaborately handled; the style, or general tone, is nervous, free, dashing—much in the way of Maria del Occidente—but the principal ground for praise is to be found in the great aggregate of quotable passages. The opening lines, for example, are singularly vivid:

Where blooms the myrtle and the olive flings

Its aromatic breath upon the air—

Where the sad Bird of Night forever sings

Meet anthems for the Children of Despair.

The themes of the poem—a few lines farther on—are summed up in words of Byronic pith and vigor:—

——youthful Love,

Ill-starred, yet trustful, truthful and sublime

As ever angels chronicled above—

The sorrowings of Beauty in her prime—

Virtue’s reward—the punishment of Crime—

The dark, inscrutable decrees of Fate—

Despair, untold before in prose or rhyme.

We give a few more instances of what we term “quotable” passages—thoughtful, vivid, pungent or vigorous:

Fresh blows the breeze on Tarick’s burnished bay—

The silent sea-mews bend them through the spray—

The beauty-freighted barges bound afar

To the soft music of the gay guitar. . . . . .

The olive children of the Indian Sea.

That rayless realm where Fancy never beams—

That Nothingness beyond the Land of Dreams.

Folded his arms across his sable vest

As if to keep the heart within his breast.

——Violets lifting up their azure eyes

Like timid virgins whom Love’s steps surprise.

And all is hushed—so still—so silent there

That one might hear an angel wing the air.

——There are times when the sick soul

Lies calm amid the storms that ’round it roll,

Indifferent to Fate or to what haven

By the terrific tempest it is driven.

The dahlias, leaning from the golden vase,

Peer pensively into her pallid face,

While the sweet songster o’er the oaken door

Looks through his grate and warbles “weep no more!”

——beauteous in her misery—

A jewel sparkling up through the dark sea

Of Sorrow.

Delirium’s world of fantasy and pain,

Where hung the fiery moon and stars of blood

And phantom ships rolled on the rolling flood.

“Isabelle or The Broken Heart” occupies some 40 pages, and is fully as good as “The Child of the Sea”—although in a very different way. There is less elaboration, perhaps, but not less true polish, and even more imagination.

The “Miscellaneous Poems” are, of course, varied in merit. Some of them have been public favorites for a long time. “My Study,” especially, has been often quoted and requoted. It is terse and vigorous. From “The Beleagured Heart” we extract a quatrain of very forcible originality:

I hear the mournful moans of joy—

Hope, sobbing while she cheers—

Like dew descending from the leaf

The dropping of Love’s tears.

The volume is most exquisitely printed and bound—one of the most beautiful books of the season.

The History of England, from the Accession of James II. By Thomas Babington Macaulay. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vols. 1 and 2. 8vo.

No person, of whig or tory politics, could in the present age, propose to himself the task of writing the history of England, without feeling the delicacy and responsibility of his undertaking, and the necessity of exercising a different class of powers from those which may have given sparkle and point to his partisan efforts. The importance of the principles involved in the events and characters coming under his view, and their wide applications to contemporary controversies, would be sure to bring down upon the unlucky advocate a storm of moral and immoral indignation. It would seem on the first blush that Macaulay, with all his vast and vivified erudition, was not a writer calculated to experience the full force of a historian’s duties, or to display in the analysis and judgment of events that intellectual conscientiousness which is a rare quality even in powerful minds. His historical essays bear as unmistakable marks of partisanship as ability, and are especially characterized by a merciless severity, which, in the name of justice, too often loses the insight us well as the toleration which come from charity. Sir James Macintosh, toward the commencement of his career, referred to him as “a writer of consummate ability, who has failed in little but in the respect due to the abilities and character of his opponents.” Though as a partisan, Macaulay was a partisan on the right side, on the side of liberty and truth, the unmeasured scorn he poured, hot from his heart, on tyrants and bigots, and the fierce, swift sweep of his generalizations, often made his cooler readers suspicious of his accuracy when most dazzled and delighted by his brilliancy. In the present history a great change is manifest. The petulance, the flippancy, the dogmatism of the essayist, are hardly observable, and in their place we have the solid judgment of the historian. There is a general lowering of the tone in which persons and principles are considered, consequent upon the change in the writer’s position from an antagonist to a judge. The style, while it has no lack of the force, richness, variety, directness and brilliancy, which characterized the diction of the essayist, has likewise a sweetness, gravity and composure which the essayist never displayed. Though the writer’s opinions are radically the same as ever, they are somewhat modified by being seen through a less extravagant expression, and by being restored to their proper relations. In fact, the history presents Macaulay as a wiser and more comprehensive man than his essays, and if we sometimes miss the generous warmth and intensity, and the daring sweep of his earlier compositions, we also miss their declamatory contemptuousness and mental bombast.

The volumes which the Harpers have given to us in so elegant a form, (vulgarized a little by Dr. Webster’s ortho-graphical crotchets,) close with the proceedings of the Convention which gave the crown to William and Mary. A long historical introduction, containing a view of English history previous to the reign of James II., and a view of England, in its manners, customs, literature and people at the time of his accession, occupy the larger portion of the first volume, and are almost unmatched, certainly unexcelled, in historical literature, for the combination of condensed richness of matter with popularity of style. Then follows the narrative of the three years of folly and madness which produced the revolution of 1688, and hurled James II. from his throne. This narrative is detailed with a minuteness which leaves nothing untold necessary to the complete apprehension of the subject in all its bearings, and it evinces on almost every page not only singular felicity in narration, but great power of original and striking observation. Masterly generalization, and sagacity in seizing and luminousness in unfolding the principles of events. The whole history has the interest of a grand dramatic poem, in which the movement of the story and delineation of the characters are managed with consummate skill. The portraits of Charles II., James II., Danby, Rochester, Sunderland, Godolphin, Halifax, Churchill, and especially William of Orange, are altogether superior to any which have previously appeared. Halifax and King William seem to be Macaulay’s favorites, and he has surprised many of his readers by his comparative coolness to Russell, Sydney, and the whig patriots generally.

The history closes with an eloquent passage on the “glorious” Revolution of 1688. It appears to us that the meanness and lowness which Macaulay has developed in the actors in the event, impress the reader with a different notion of it. The whole thing has a jobby air, in which no commanding genius is observable, and no sacrifices seem to have been made. Indeed Macaulay himself, in one of his essays, remarks truly that the only sacrifices made in the Revolution, “was the sacrifice which Churchill made of honor and Anne of natural affection.” That the Revolution, in its results, was one of the most glorious recorded in human annals, there can be little doubt, but it had its birth in such odious treachery, and was conducted by men so deficient in elevation of mind or even common honesty, that its story is little calculated to kindle sympathy, or awaken admiration.

The History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Paris. By Lord Mahon. Edited by Henry Reed, Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 8vo.

The author of this history is all English nobleman of large historical acquirements, who has managed to produce two or three valuable works demanding great study and research, without interfering with his duties as a member of Parliament, though, doubtless with some interference with his pleasures as a member of the English aristocracy. The present work is valuable for its accuracy, and interesting from its giving a connected view of the history of England during a period but little known except by the empty abstracts of stupid compilers, or the brilliant but prejudiced letters and memoirs of contemporary writers and statesmen. It comprehends the administrations of Harley and Bolingbroke, of Stanhope, Walpole, Carteret, Newcastle and Chatham, thus including the latter years of the reign of Queen Anne and the reigns of George I. and II. The period covers a wide field of characters and events, and Lord Mahon has been especially successful in unraveling the threads of the foreign policy of England, and indicating the difficulties experienced by her statesmen in sustaining the House of Hanover on the throne. In a narrative point of view the best portions of the history are those relating to the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. It is almost needless to say that Professor Reed has added much to the value and interest of the work by his elucidative notes.

But the richness of Lord Mahon’s materials and the interest of his subject cannot conceal the fact that he lacks both the heart and the brain of an able historian, and that he is essentially a common-place man. The reflections he appends to some of his narratives are commonly such obvious truisms, or such poor apologies for reason, that the reader is made painfully aware of his being in the company of a mediocre gentleman, who, while he always means well, never means much. Lord Mahon is deficient equally in historical science and historical imagination, and his work equally barren of profound principles and vivid pictures. A moderate tory, he holds the hearsays of his creed with a lazy acquiescence, without sufficient passion to be a bigot, and without sufficient logic to be a sophist. When he is tempted into historical parallels, or disquisitions on the changes of parties, as in that passage where he essays to prove that a modern whig is synonymous with a tory of Queen Anne’s day, he adopts the argumentation of Fluellen rather than Chillingworth—shows that “there is a mountain in Wales and a mountain in Macedon,” and leaves the reader to mourn over the misdirection of the human faculties. In his estimate of literature he is still worse. The disquisition on the literature of Queen Anne’s time, in the present history, is a medley of mingled commonplace, which has been worn to rags, and critical nonsense, which has been long exploded. His history, therefore, must be considered simply as a useful narrative of important events, and carefully distinguished from those of Guizot and Thierrey, of Hallam and Macaulay, of Prescott and Bancroft.

Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1678-9. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.

This beautifully printed volume sustains both the reputation of its publishers for printing handsome books, and its reputed author for writing good ones. It is generally attributed to Whittier, and it certainly displays throughout the shrewdness with which that poet observes, and the facility with which he idealizes events. Here is a volume bringing up to the eye with the vividness of reality the scenes and characters of a past age, and making us as familiar with them as if we had ridden by the side of Margaret in her journey from Boston to Newbury, and yet through the whole book runs a vein of pure poetry, lending a consecrating light to scenes which might possess but little interest if actually observed. The quaint spelling undoubtedly adds to the illusion of its antiquity, but what makes it really seem old is its primitive sentiment and bold delineations. Margaret herself is a most bewitching piece of saintliness, with the sweetness and purity of one of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons, and as full of genial humanity as of beautiful devotion. Placed as she is amid the collision of opposite fanaticisms, the austere fanaticism of the Puritan and the vehement fanaticism of the Quaker, she shines both by her own virtues and by contrast with the harsh qualities by which she is surrounded. The book provokes a comparison with the Diary of Lady Willoughby, and that comparison it will more than stand, being superior to that charming volume in the range of its persons and events, and equal to it in the conception of the leading character. The author has shown especial art in modifying every thing, by the supposed medium of mind through which it passes—the heroine telling the whole story in her own words—and at the same time preserving every thing in its essential life. This is a difficult and delicate process of representation, but Whittier has performed it.

Democracy in France. By Monsieur Guizot, Late Prime Minister. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

This little volume is well worthy the reputation of one of the greatest historians, philosophers and statesmen at the age—in other words, of the reputation of Guizot. It is marked by preeminent ability in statement, analysis, argumentation and composition, and we doubt not will exert some considerable influence on the politics of France. In his preface the author avers that nothing in the volume bears the impress of his personal situation, and he adds, “While events of such magnitude are passing before his eyes, a man who did not forget himself would deserve to be forever forgotten.” The book justifies the author’s assertion. It is simply an examination of things without regard to persons, and is as philosophic in its tone as in its method. The chapters on The Social Republic and The Elements of Society are masterpieces of analysis and statement, and well deserve the attentive study of all who think or prattle on social science. It seems to us that the present volume is sufficient to convince all candid minds, that whatever may be the faults and errors of Guizot as a statesman, he has no equal among the men at present dominant in France. Since his fall that country has been governed, or misgoverned, by soldiers and sentimentalists, with a pistol in one hand and the Rights of Man in the other, and is a standing monument of the madness of trusting the state to men of “second rate ability and first rate incapacity.” The Red Republicans have principles; M. Guizot has principles; the legitimists have principles; but the present dynasty has the peculiar character of being, in an intellectual sense, the most thoroughly unprincipled government that French ingenuity could have formed.

Oregon and California. By J. Quinn Thornton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.

A pleasant book, well written, and containing much information just now, peculiarly valuable in relation to Oregon and California. Many strange phases of life in the wilderness and prairie, are described by one who knows its peculiar hardships and pleasures. The terrible sufferings, the awful stories told of the early emigrants, are faithfully given, and, if official accounts be true, are scarcely exaggerated. A valuable appendix on the gold country is added, undoubtedly to be relied on. The book is well illustrated in wood.

The Parterre, a Collection of Flowers Culled by the Wayside. By D. W. Belisle. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott & Co., 1849.

A pretty looking volume, very creditable to the publishers in a typographical point of view, and containing a number of poems of various lengths, on a variety of subjects. The longest, Wallenpaupack, is an attempt, and a very creditable one also, to commemorate an incident of the history of the North American Indian, a source of poetical subjects too much neglected. The book is well worth attention. It may not be uninteresting to state that the type has all been set up by the author.

Roland Cashel. By Charles Lever. Illustrated by Phiz. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This is probably the best novel of one of the most popular novelists of the day. Lever has not much solidity of mind, and accordingly never produces any masterpieces of characterization or passion, but he has a quicksilver spirit of frolic and drollery, and an intensity of mirthful feeling which have made some critics place him on a level with Dickens. The present volume will more than sustain the reputation which his former frolicksome audacities have attained.