REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

The Scarlet Letter, a Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo.

In this beautiful and touching romance Hawthorne has produced something really worthy of the fine and deep genius which lies within him. The “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from an Old Manse,” are composed simply of sketches and stories, and although such sketches and stories as few living men could write, they are rather indications of the possibilities of his mind than realizations of its native power, penetration, and creativeness. In “The Scarlet Letter” we have a complete work, evincing a true artist’s certainty of touch and expression in the exhibition of characters and events, and a keen-sighted and far-sighted vision into the essence and purpose of spiritual laws. There is a profound philosophy underlying the story which will escape many of the readers whose attention is engrossed by the narrative.

The book is prefaced by some fifty pages of autobiographical matter, relating to the author, his native city of Salem, and the Custom House, from which he was ousted by the Whigs. These pages, instinct with the vital spirit of humor, show how rich and exhaustless a fountain of mirth Hawthorne has at his command. The whole representation has the dreamy yet distinct remoteness of the purely comic ideal. The view of Salem streets; the picture of the old Custom House at the head of Derby’s wharf, with its torpid officers on a summer’s afternoon, their chairs all tipped against the wall, chatting about old stories, “while the frozen witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from their lips”—the delineation of the old Inspector, whose “reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s very nostrils,” and on whose palate there were flavors “which had lingered there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast,” and the grand view of the stout Collector, in his aged heroism, with the honors of Chippewa and Fort Erie on his brow, are all encircled with that visionary atmosphere which proves the humorist to be a poet, and indicates that his pictures are drawn from the images which observation has left on his imagination. The whole introduction, indeed, is worthy of a place among the essays of Addison and Charles Lamb.

With regard to “The Scarlet Letter,” the readers of Hawthorne might have expected an exquisitely written story, expansive in sentiment, and suggestive in characterization, but they will hardly be prepared for a novel of so much tragic interest and tragic power, so deep in thought and so condensed in style, as is here presented to them. It evinces equal genius in the region of great passions and elusive emotions, and bears on every page the evidence of a mind thoroughly alive, watching patiently the movements of morbid hearts when stirred by strange experiences, and piercing, by its imaginative power, directly through all the externals to the core of things. The fault of the book, if fault it have, is the almost morbid intensity with which the characters are realized, and the consequent lack of sufficient geniality in the delineation. A portion of the pain of the author’s own heart is communicated to the reader, and although there is great pleasure received while reading the volume, the general impression left by it is not satisfying to the artistic sense. Beauty bends to power throughout the work, and therefore the power displayed is not always beautiful. There is a strange fascination to a man of contemplative genius in the psychological details of a strange crime like that which forms the plot of the Scarlet Letter, and he is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them.

If there be, however, a comparative lack of relief to the painful emotions which the novel excites, owing to the intensity with which the author concentrates attention on the working of dark passions, it must be confessed that the moral purpose of the book is made more definite by this very deficiency. The most abandoned libertine could not read the volume without being thrilled into something like virtuous resolution, and the roué would find that the deep-seeing eye of the novelist had mustered the whole philosophy of that guilt of which practical roués are but childish disciples. To another class of readers, those who have theories of seduction and adultery modeled after the French school of novelists, and for whom libertinism is of the brain, the volume may afford matter for very instructive and edifying contemplation; for, in truth, Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter, has utterly undermined the whole philosophy on which the French novels rest, by seeing farther and deeper into the essence both of conventional and moral laws; and he has given the results of his insight, not in disquisitions and criticisms, but in representations more powerful even than those of Sue, Dumas, or George Sand. He has made his guilty parties end, not as his own fancy or his own benevolent sympathies might dictate, but as the spiritual laws, lying back of all persons, dictated to him. In this respect there is hardly a novel in English literature more purely objective.

As everybody will read “The Scarlet Letter,” it would be impertinent to give a synopsis of the plot. The principal characters, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Hester, and little Pearl, all indicate a firm grasp of individualities, although from the peculiar method of the story, they are developed more in the way of logical analysis than by events. The descriptive portions of the novel are in a high degree picturesque and vivid, bringing the scenes directly home to the heart and imagination, and indicating a clear vision of the life as well as forms of nature. Little Pearl is perhaps Hawthorne’s finest poetical creation, and is the very perfection of ideal impishness.

In common, we trust, with the rest of mankind, we regretted Hawthorne’s dismissal from the Custom House, but if that event compels him to exert his genius in the production of such books as the present, we shall be inclined to class the Honorable Secretary of the Treasury among the great philanthropists. In his next work we hope to have a romance equal to The Scarlet Letter in pathos and power, but more relieved by touches of that beautiful and peculiar humor, so serene and so searching, in which he excels almost all living writers.

Latter Day Pamphlets. Edited by Thomas Carlyle. No. 1. The Present Time. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.

The reader of Carlyle will find nothing new in principle, and little new in phraseology, in this pamphlet, but it is still fresh and racy, and exhibits the author hammering as lustily as ever on his old anvil, with his old tools. The picture given of the poor simple Pope, with the New Testament in his hand—the pitying contempt with which Lamartine is alluded to—and the view of American democracy—will be found the most readable portions of the pamphlet. Lamartine, with his fine French phrases and sentimentalities, looks small enough as subjected to the surly tests of such an Icelandic critic as Carlyle—“a most eloquent, fair-spoken literary gentleman, whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest, and heaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to be properly ‘the first stump-orator in the world, standing, too, on the highest stump for the time.’ A sorrowful spectacle to all men of reflection during the time he lasted, that poor M. de Lamartine; with nothing in him but melodious wind and soft sowder, which he and others took for something divine, and not diabolic! Sad enough: the eloquent latest impersonation of Chaos-come-again; able to talk for itself, and declare persuasively that it is Cosmos! However, you have but to wait a little, in such cases; all balloons do and must give up their gas in the pressure of things, and are collapsed in a sufficiently wretched manner before long.” The wise Yankee friend alluded to here is, we suppose, Mr. Emerson.

Carlyle, though he seems with De Tocqueville, to consider Democracy inevitable in Europe, still despises and hates it, and thinks that even in America it is nothing more than “Anarchy plus the constable.” His view of the United States, sufficiently contemptuous as a whole, closes with a bitter, sardonic jest, which we think will make the tour of the world, and injure us more than a thousand Trollopes and Basil Halls. He asks, “What great human soul, what great thought, what great, noble thing that one could worship, or loyally admire, has yet been produced there?” We might answer this question easily, but Carlyle answers it in a sufficiently provoking manner—“What have they done? They have doubled their population every twenty years. They have begotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded example, eighteen millions of the greatest bores ever seen in this world before—that, hitherto, is their feat in History.”

As regards Great Britain, Carlyle considers that the only practical way to remedy its evils, is to reject all cant about liberty and constitutional government, and enslave the lower classes. He accordingly recommends to the English government a plan of enforced labor, and puts an imaginary speech in the mouth of the Prime Minister, addressed to the “floods of Irish and other Beggars, the able-bodied Lackalls, nomadic or stationary, and the General Assembly, outdoor and indoor, of the Pauper Populations of these Realms.” This speech sounds well enough as a joke, provided a man can view a horde of men as he would so many horses, but it is ridiculous as a practical exposition of principles. It is certain that in one hour after a British minister had made such a declaration, army, navy, and party would melt away from him, and he would be on the gallows or in Bedlam. As a politician, Carlyle is little more than a philosopher of sneers and negations, without one positive practical principle. His idea of government implies a falsehood in fact, reposing on the monstrous assumption that civilized society is composed of a vast collection of men, little better than brutes, who would endure the tyranny of a smaller number of despots, little better than Carlyle.

Modern Literature and Literary Men: Being a Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. By George Gilfillan: New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

Mr. Emerson has remarked that “it makes a great difference in the force of a sentence whether a man be behind it or no.” We hardly think that there is a true man behind the best of Mr. Gilfillan’s sentences. He has a mind of much sensitiveness to his own merits, and some to the merits of others, and welters readily into the expression of both; but his inspiration seems to spring from presumption and whisky-punch. The reader is teased into attention by Mr. Gilfillan’s confident manner, without having his attention rewarded by intimacy with Mr. Gilfillan’s nature. There is merit in his occasional thoughts, and truth in his detached remarks, but the impression of the whole is of a slush of shining words. The subject is only an occasion for the author to pour out his own memories and fancies, and thus to exhibit himself. The movement of his mind is half-way between a strut and a reel, and his faculties are ever in a state of pert intoxication. He paws rather than handles a great poet, and we never witness his approach to a Milton or Wordsworth without a shudder. Having in his intellect no presiding will or even principle, his compositions are an anarchy of opinions and terms, without any intellectual conscientiousness or austere regard for the truth of things; and their popularity is the result of that sack of the dictionary which has made so much of our popular literature a mere debauch in words.

Cosmos: a Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. By Alexander Von Humboldt. Translated from the German, by E. C. Otté. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.

The noble head of Humboldt which adorns the title-page of this edition gives at once a favorable impression of his capacity to treat even the vast subject which here has tasked his powers. The head is high, broad, massive, and roomy—spacious enough for knowledge as universal as his, and strong enough to use that knowledge, and not be used by it. The work promises to be one which will leave its mark on the century. Even in England it is acknowledged by some men of science to be the greatest mental product of the time. The advantage which Humboldt holds over most savans is his appreciation of the two aspects under which nature may be viewed, and the two uses she serves. He combines the philosopher and the poet, looking for beauty as well as truth, and seeing also that there is a point where they unite. “Cosmos” contains a vast amount of generalized knowledge to satisfy the understanding; but it is also replete with gorgeous descriptions of natural scenery to fill and stimulate the imagination. We know of few works which can be more profitably read by enthusiasts either for the exclusively scientific or the exclusively poetic method of observing nature.

The East: Sketches of Travel in Egypt and the Holy Land. By the Rev. J. A. Spencer, M. A. New York: George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 8vo.

This work is elegantly printed and appropriately illustrated. The field of the author’s travels is of exceeding interest, and the mere title, “The East,” is sufficient to stir the imagination and kindle the curiosity of all “the West.” Mr. Spencer is a scholar, a Christian, and, we may add, well versed in English Composition, but he has chosen to preserve the epistolary form in which he recorded his first impressions, and this he has done without having in his letters much of that familiar charm which is the justification of the practice. If the traveler be Lady Montagu, or Horace Walpole, or Gray, or Cowper, or Byron, or even Lord Chesterfield, we should be inclined to wish to read his letters rather than his formal “tour;” but few writers are gifted with a genius for epistolary composition; and Mr. Spencer is not one of the few. There is much in his volume which might have been omitted with positive advantage. His style is the very reverse of epistolary, and yet he says a great many things having all the unimportance of chat without its raciness. With this exception we think the book an excellent one, containing valuable information clearly conveyed.

The Optimist. By Henry T. Tuckerman. New York: George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is the most delightful of Mr. Tuckerman’s many volumes of essays. It contains twenty-two papers, on as many subjects, is written in a style which evinces a graceful mastery of the resources of language, and is no less fluent in thought than in expression. Perhaps the most pleasing quality of the volume is its wealth of illustration. The writer’s mind is not only affluent in comparison and imagery, but his literary culture is so extensive as to give him a command of those sources of fascination which come from felicitous allusions to the world of authors and books. The object of the volume is finely stated, in an elegantly written preface, to be the search for the good in life, as that good is exhibited to one who can comment kindly on society, and interpret the true and beautiful in common experience. The best papers in the volume are those on New England Philosophy, Art and Artists, Lyric Poetry, Eye-Language, Flowers, Costume, Music, and Conversation. The volume should be on the shelves of every man who has the heart and imagination to enjoy the English essayists, for to that goodly company it is a positive addition.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon, Esq. With Notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman. A New Edition, to which is added a Complete Index of the Whole Work. In six volumes. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. Vols. 1 & 2.

This is a cheap reprint of the latest and best edition of Gibbon, and when completed will place one of the greatest historical productions in the world within the reach of the most limited means—the price of the whole not amounting to four dollars. Milman’s edition is in some degree founded upon Guizot’s French edition, and includes the principal notes of the latter. Both Milman and Guizot have gone carefully over Gibbon’s authorities, and while they have thus been enabled to correct his misrepresentations, they have also added much which he overlooked, or which has been brought to light since the period in which the history was written. Of the book itself, it may be said, that in the combination of vast erudition with philosophic thought, it is the object of emulous despair to all succeeding historians. The subject is the greatest within the range of historical composition, and Gibbon has so nearly exhausted it that even a philosophical historian like Guizot is contented to be but an annotator when he approaches it. The general reader, after many repeated perusals of the work, continually returns to it for the depth and acuteness of its reflections, the richness and weight of its style, and that masterly irony, sapping a solemn creed with “solemn sneer,” which, though sometimes an expression of the author’s moral deficiencies, and in a few instances disgracefully disingenuous, is still a weapon which makes falsehood and prejudice wither when it merely gleams, and perish when it strikes.

A Few Thoughts for a Young Man. A Lecture, delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. By Horace Mann. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields.

The author of this eloquent lecture is known principally for his great services to the cause of popular education—a cause which he has adopted with his whole soul, and into which he has thrown whatever of fire there is in his blood and of intelligence there is in his brain. The present address flames with the peculiar characteristics of his genius—vehement, rapid, and epigrammatic in style, large, generous, independent and original in thought. We disagree with some of the positions he has assumed, but we know of few books which contain, in so small a space, so much to breathe energy and aspiration into the souls of young men as this warm gush of blended thought and knowledge, from a soul eminently energetic and aspiring itself.

The Modern Housewife. By Alexis Soyer. Edited by an American Housekeeper. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This book we can commend to all ladies who are, or hope to be, housewifes. It simplifies the whole art of cooking, and has a receipt for every dish which the Heliogabalus imagination of man has conceived. It has been edited, seemingly with great care, by some gentleman amateur of the table, and contains directions for the food equally of rich and poor, the dyspeptic and the ostrich stomach.

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D. D. LLD. By his Son-in-Law, the Rev. William Hanna, LLD. New York: Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 12mo.

The first volume of this important work has just been issued, containing long extracts from the doctor’s early diary and correspondence, and full accounts of his life and writings to the year 1814. As the biography of a good and eminent man, furnishing, as it does, the means of understanding the process according to which his character grew into such large proportions. The work promises to be one of the most valuable of the season.

The Red Rover. By the author of “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” etc. Revised, Corrected, and Illustrated with a New Introduction, Notes, etc. by the Author. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo.

We well recollect the excitement in the novel-reading world produced by this book on its first publication. The rush on the circulating libraries was continued for a couple of months, and even boys were considered behind the age, unless they had read it. In its present cheap and elegant form, and enriched by the revision of the author’s maturer judgment, we hope it will have another term of popularity.

Elements of Natural Philosophy. By Alonzo Gray, A. M. Illustrated by 300 Wood Cuts. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo.

This work is designed as a text book for academies, high schools, and colleges, but it is well adapted also for the general reader. Principles are stated with equal clearness and accuracy, and the examples and illustrations are happily selected. The author evidently understands the avenues through which scientific knowledge must pass in order to reach the learner’s mind.

Hume’s History of England. Vol. 6. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.

This volume is the last of the Boston edition of Hume—an edition which places one of the most valuable and fascinating works in the language within the reach of readers of the humblest means. We are glad to see that the same enterprising house, intend to issue an edition of Gibbon in the same style, and at the same low price.

Foreign Endorsement.—It must be amusing to the subscribers of Graham’s Magazine, to see the American Press praising the story of “The Village Doctor,” published in “Blackwood’s Magazine” last year as the first translation of that excellent French story. The article appeared in “Graham’s Magazine” more than two years before, i. e. in the October and November numbers, 1847, and had therefore been read in this country by at least one hundred thousand readers, before it was copied by the weekly press in this country from Blackwood.

The truth is, the American Magazines contain every month articles which would make the fortune of a London or Edinburgh periodical, which are passed over in silence, but the most inferior article of English stamp is endorsed as something extraordinary, merely because it is English. This should be corrected.

Mr. Leonard Myers, who translated the story of “The Village Doctor” for us, has just had published by Messrs. Lippincott & Co., a capital story from the French, called “Money-bags and Titles.” It is a very creditable volume in every respect; the story is well told and contains some admirable hits at the follies of the age. It can be sent by mail, and is published at the price of fifty cents the volume.

A Capital Story.—The Saturday Courier has been publishing, for the past few numbers, a story of more than usual excellence, called “Linda,” by Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, whose stories heretofore in this admirable family paper have made so much stir among readers of light literature. Her story of the “Mob-Cap” ran through several editions, and is still praised as one of the most effective articles that ever appeared in a periodical. Mr. M‘Makin will find that “Linda” is destined to make a fresh demand for articles from the able pen of this lady, and we are sure he will receive the thanks of his hundred thousand readers for his liberality in thus catering to their refined taste.

Our correspondent, Richard Coe, Jr., is about to publish a volume of his beautiful poems—a neat edition for the centre-table at the price of one dollar per volume. His address is 33 Church Alley, Philadelphia, where any of his friends will be supplied.