Part 2 — REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

H. Kavanagh. A Tale. By H. W. Longfellow. Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This volume has been very extensively read, has delighted almost every reader, and yet has left on the minds of many a feeling of disappointment. Considered as a novel, it must be admitted that the story is but slight, the characters hinted rather than developed, and the whole frame-work fragile; but it would perhaps be more fair to judge it according to the purpose the author had in view in writing it, and this purpose was evidently not the production of a consistent novel, but the illustration of an idea through the forms of a tale. Mr. Churchill, who is always meditating a romance and never producing one, and while musing over the idea is unconscious of the romance developing under his very eyes, is a good illustration of the motto of the work⁠—

“The flighty purpose never is o’ertook,

Unless the deed go with it.”

The romance present to Mr. Churchill’s vision, but which he does not perceive, is, to be sure, a common one, but none the less affecting because it is common. It is a simple but quietly intense representation of love in its two great expressions in life—the love which imparadises and the love which breaks hearts; and it has no reference at all to time, but is the universal fact of all ages.

In addition to his lovers, Mr. Longfellow has sketched with much beautiful humor, the characters and characteristics of a country town. His mirth is the very poetry of mirth, sly, genial, fanciful, reminding the reader of Dickens without suggesting the thought of imitation. All the incidents and emotions of the book are enveloped in an atmosphere of poetry. It is this magical charm of the poet, investing the commonest materials with a drapery of imagination, and sending a rich and golden flush through the whole expression, which constitutes the merit of the volume. An ideal sweetness, sometimes felt in the music of the words, sometimes in the fine felicity of the imagery, and sometimes in the “soft, Ausonion air,” breathed upon the characters, pervades equally the author’s humor, pathos, sentiment, passion and reflection. The effect of the whole is not to thrill or exalt the reader, not to inspire terror or awaken thoughts “beyond the reaches of his soul,” but to fill him with the highest possible degree of intellectual and moral comfort. There are no stings in the author’s mind, and he plants none in the minds of others. He is a mortal enemy to unrest, to all haggard and unhandsome thoughts and sensibilities, and fuses matter and spirit into a sensuous compound, calculated to give poetic pleasure rather than to inspire poetic action.

There is one fault to the book more serious, perhaps, than any other, and that is its shortness. The characters are well conceived, but imperfectly developed. The premises of Kavanagh’s character are excellent, but no conclusion is drawn from them except his marriage, and that is something of a non-sequitur. The ground is fairly broken for a long work, for a sort of American Wilhelm Meister, and though the author’s plan hardly demands its cultivation to the extent of its capacity, we feel rather provoked that he did not make his plan commensurate with the elements of his characters. In Kavanagh we have a reformer who blends cultivated and sensitive tastes with great aspirations, and to have fully developed such a person, by representing the modifications of his mind through its contact with the reformers and conservatives of New England, would have enabled Mr. Longfellow to produce the most original and striking novel of the day, and one which would have been a mirror of New England life in its present manifestations. The ideas and purposes of Kavanagh alone are given, and he, rather than Mr. Churchill spreads a gulf between intentions and deeds. To have made the woman he loved non-sympathetic with him as a reformer, and the woman he did not love his adherent in that capacity, would have finely complicated the matter, and resulted in many original agonies, ecstasies, mental struggles, and thrilling situations. Such a novel, even if, like Goethe’s, it had cost ten years’ labor, would, as treated by Mr. Longfellow, have obtained an instantaneous and enduring popularity.

My Uncle the Curate. A Novel. By the Author of “The Bachelor of the Albany” etc. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The mere announcement of any thing from the sparkling brain of the Bachelor of the Albany, is sufficient to raise anticipations of brisk and business-like satire, of felicitous expression, and of good-natured representation of the follies of conventional life. The present work evinces more of the novelist, and less of the wit-snapper, than any thing the author has previously written. The story and the characters, though plentifully bespangled with epigrams, are still not immersed and lost in them; and there is not that incessant effort after smartness and point which at one period seemed to be the law of the writer’s mind. Mr. Woodward, the Curate, has some capital traits of character felicitously developed, and his wife, belonging to that kind of women known as everybody’s mother, is drawn to the life. In Mrs. Spenser we have one of those plagues of mankind, who cause more misery than pestilence and war—a nervous, fretful, peevish, unsatisfied, vinegar-souled wife, engaged in slaughtering her husband with pins, and making up for the weakness of her instruments by the continuity of her attacks. Lucy McCracken appears to have been suggested by Thackeray’s Becky Sharp, and she is in every way inferior to the latter in the logic of her artfulness. Dawson, Sidney Spenser, Markham and Vivyan, are all well discriminated delineations of young men, though the lover is the least interesting. The author is something of a bungler in handling the passions and affections, and considered as a man of wit, is singularly blind to the ludicrous effect which his serious scenes often produce. He is a capital laugher at the sentimentalities and agonies of other novelists, but when he ventures into their region he is as far from common sense and natural feeling as any of the dabblers in broken hearts and crushed affections whom he ridicules.

The Personal History and Experience of David Copperfield the Younger. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by H. K Browne. New York: John Wiley. Part I.

The announcement of a new work by the most popular novelist of the day, is quite an event to the famished lovers of his genius. It is difficult to judge from the first number whether it will be worthy of the author’s fame, but it promises well both in respect to originality and interest. With the characteristic traits of Dickens’s style and mode of delineating characters and narrating events, it starts a new society of individuals, who may rival the old familiar names in popularity. The peculiar humor, fancy, sweetness, and verbal felicity, which have already delighted so many thousands, appear in this work with their old power, and give no signs of decay. For knowledge of the heart we would allude to the scene in which Mrs. Copperfield questions Davy as to the exact words the gentleman at Lowestoft used in speaking of her beauty, as pre-eminently excellent. For quaint humor, bordering continually on pathos, the life which Davy led in the queer house on Yarmouth beach, with Peggotty’s relations, might be triumphantly quoted to silence all doubts of Dickens’s continued fertility. The knowledge evinced throughout of the interior workings and external expression of a child’s mind, is quite remarkable. Indeed, if the author proceeds as he has commenced, there can be little fear of his success. It remains, however, to be seen, whether or not his characters will please through twenty numbers.

Holydays Abroad; or Europe from the West. By Mrs. Kirkland. New York: Baker & Scribner. 2 vols. 12mo.

The accomplished authoress of these elegant volumes has established so good a reputation by her previous writings, that we opened her present book with some reluctance, fearing that the subject would be too threadbare even for her powers to make interesting. Indeed records of tours in Europe have become so common, so natural an employment of aspiring mediocrity, that to read them is an exercise in yawning, and to criticise them an assumption of the office of executioner. We prefer dullness in almost any other form. It is due to Mrs. Kirkland, however, to acknowledge that she has triumphed over the disadvantages of her subject, and produced a really interesting work, avoiding all the wearisome topographical inanities and stereotyped opinions of most tourists, and giving a new and vivid glimpse of foreign life. She appears to understand the wants of her readers, and she tells them the very things they most desire to know. Her passage on St. Peter’s is one instance among many which the book affords, of her knowledge of the ignorance of her readers, and her felicity in suggesting a view of a whole subject by fixing on a few important details. She generally succeeds in conveying so warm an impression of the objects she describes, as to make her readers the companions in the journey.

The Adirondack; or Life in the Woods. By J. T. Headley, Author of Washington and his Generals, etc. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo.

In this volume the dashing and brilliant author of Napoleon and his Marshals has occupied a new ground. The northern section of the state of New York, comprising nearly eight counties, is still an unsubdued forest, “crossed by no road, enlivened by no cultivation, not a keel disturbing its waters, while bears, panthers, wolves, moose and deer, are the only lords of the soil.” Into this region Mr. Headley conducts his readers, and certainly few subjects could be better fitted for his picturesque pen. The magnificent scenery of the region he has described with great force, freshness and pictorial effect, and the various adventures incident to a life in the woods, are narrated with the author’s accustomed vigor and raciness. The work being in the form of familiar letters, admits of every style of verbal expression which truly reflects the feeling of the moment, and the reader is therefore not troubled by the presence of those occasional audacities of diction which, in Mr. Headley’s more elaborate works, sometimes offend a pure taste.

Analogy of the Ancient Craft, Masonry, to Revealed Religion. Gregg & Elliott.

This is the title of a beautifully printed octavo volume, from the pen, and evidently from the heart, of Charles Scott, A. M., Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the State of Mississippi. The literature of the Order of Masonry is not extensive, for reasons that the members of the Order probably fully comprehend. It is confined to a few volumes of addresses, and to some liturgies and handbooks; all, of course, useful to the craft, but not all interesting to the world. The volume before us is the result of much deep feeling, which manifested and employed itself in careful research, close reading, sustained reflection, and an able exposition of the results of all those processes.

The Analogy is ably made, and though the uninitiated may not feel the same interest as do the “craftsmen” in the Analogy, yet many readers will find on its pages much to admire, much that will instruct, much that will lead him to reflect and inquire.

The initiated who sits down to the book with a love of the institution, will find that love augmented, his respect increased, and his views greatly enlarged by the developments of the able author of the volume. We commend the work to the attention of general readers, but especially to those who share membership with Mr. Scott.

Last Leaves of American History: Comprising Histories of the Mexican War and California. By Emma Willard. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

Commencing with the inauguration of General Harrison, Mrs. Willard presents us with a clear and condensed account of the events which followed to the close of the Mexican war. Although most of them are familiar to the readers of the newspapers, we suppose that few minds possess them in their order and connection, stripped of all exaggeration and telegraphic inaccuracies. Mrs. Willard writes in a bold, decisive style, without any apparent partisan object, and with no other purpose to serve than to glorify the country as far as it can be done without any sacrifice of truth. We have found the volume interesting and accurate.

The Genius of Italy: being Sketches of Italian Life, Literature and Religion. By Rev. Robert Turnbull, Author of Genius of Scotland, etc. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is an exceedingly interesting and well-written volume, full at once of discernment and enthusiasm, exhibiting considerable knowledge of Italian literature, scenery, manners and character, and showing a true Anglo-Saxon sagacity in its views of the present state of Italy. The work is both descriptive and critical, and many passages have a pictorial distinctness which prove that the objects described were visibly mirrored on the writer’s imagination as he wrote. The sketches of Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, contain many correct opinions, and are well calculated to convey information as well as to inspire enthusiasm for the genius of Italy.

History of King Charles the Second of England. By Jacob Abbott. With Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo.

This is a most useful and entertaining biography of a regal roué, whose reign is the scoff and jeer of history. Charles was a good-natured rascal, whose destitution of principle and indifference to shame, approached the marvelous. The record of his reign is full of matter for reflection, and Mr. Abbott has presented it with more than his accustomed felicity in the selection of events, and graceful simplicity of style.