LITERARY NOTICES.

Gala Days. By Gail Hamilton, Author of 'Country Living and Country Thinking.' Ticknor & Fields, Boston. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Who will not welcome another book from the pen of Gail Hamilton, nor name a 'gala day' indeed the one devoted to a perusal of these pleasant pages? As Americans, we are very proud of Gail Hamilton. We regard her books as blessings to the community. We know of no familiar essays comparable to hers; we prefer them greatly to those of Elia. Everything she touches assumes a sudden interest, no matter how trivial in itself it may be. She pours sunshine over the pettiest details of every-day life. We have known and felt all she tells us, lived it as life, and instantaneously recognize it as truth; but who before has ever recorded it for us—nay, who could do it for us, save this gifted woman, who accepts all with a spirit so brave and true? How acute her analysis of character! Every house has its own Halicarnassus. He is a typal man, as is shown in the fact that husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers are constantly called 'Halicarnassus' by the ladies most closely associated with them. Halicarnassus—tantalizing and antagonistic, slow to work and ready to jeer, the plague and pest of the home hearth, but at the same time its pride and joy, true and helpful in all real emergencies, though full of irritating taunts and desperate indolence. Such books keep our spirits up in these days of national calamity and domestic losses. Their charm is indescribable. Their style is sharp and brusque, but telling of wide culture; keen, but tender; clear as mountain brook, but varied and full as a river. Gail Hamilton will write of the daily trifles of which life is made, then boldly grapple with the highest truths; she mounts from the hut to the skies, and pours the light of heaven on all she touches by the way. Humor and pathos, fun and earnestness, fiery indignation and loving charity, detailed truths and bold imaginations meet in her singularly rich, graphic, natural, and original pages. We have often heard fault found with them by the artificial, as fault is always found with things fresh and natural; but for ourselves we would not willingly lose a single line she has ever written. No affectation, no cant, no sickly feeling, no weakness, no inflation, no appealing for petty sympathy, no writing for the sake of seeming fine, does she ever indulge in. She coins words at will, for she writes from her heart and is no purist; but we feel them to be appropriate, and requisite to express the shade of thought in question: we may laugh at them at first, but so natural and naive are they that we soon find them stealing into our own vocabulary.

The beneficial effect of such writings upon American women cannot be overestimated. They act as invigorating tonics, courses of beefsteak and iron upon the somewhat too fragile loveliness, the exacting and fastidious fine-ladyism, the morbid helplessness, far too prevalent among them. Their ideal of womanhood has been wrong, narrow and contracted, wanting in strength, breadth, and charity. Miss Muloch and Gail Hamilton, while cherishing the sanctity of womanhood, are giving broader views, higher aims, truer delicacy, and greater self-reliance to their plastic sex. Their lessons and examples are bracing as the sea breeze, and soothing as air fresh from the piny mountain.

Gail Hamilton dares to call things by their right names; humbugs die and shams perish as her clear, deep eyes gaze upon them. She has the bravery of virtue, and battles courageously with wrong, selfishness, and weakness, though we always feel it is a woman's arm that strikes the blow, and the Halicarnassuses of earth are ready to kneel to receive it. But that she has explicitly forbidden all intrusion into her privacy, we would say more about her. Meantime we frankly offer her our sympathy and humble admiration, our true and leal homage, our grateful appreciation of her strong, womanly, truthful, pure, and generous nature. Move on in peace, fair iconoclast of false idols, stripper of tinsel shrines, bringer of pleasant hours to the quiet home-hearth, vigorous painter of home tasks and duties; and may Halicarnassus feed upon your pungent and salty wit, drink the wine of your valiant and patriotic heart, and bask in the sunshine of your loyal and loving soul forever and ever!

Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

Messrs. Ticknor & Fields are daily doing their countrymen service by publishing good books, and thus increasing the means for promoting general and solid culture. To them as well as to the gifted author are due our thanks for this agreeable volume of truthful and instructive sketches. It is, in fact, the portfolio of a genuine artist. He tells us that the picture to have been evolved from a combination of these faithful outlines is now never to be completed. This is certainly to be regretted so far as artistic enjoyment is concerned; but, in regard to exact portrayal of subject matter, sketches are ofttimes more valuable, because more precise, than the finished work as seen through the haze of the artist's imagination, wrought upon by the softening influences of time, distance, and the necessary requirements of beauty in every such creation.

Americans, until recently, have been prone either to sneer indiscriminately at everything foreign, or to undervalue their own country and advantages, and find nothing tolerable which was not the growth of the eastern shore of the Atlantic. These tendencies are now, we think, giving place to a calmer impartiality, a broader and more enlightened spirit of inquiry. Patriotism is no longer a mere matter of scoff among politicians, self-sacrifice the object of newspaper sneers, our country a spread-eagle figure for a Fourth-of-July oration. American men and women now know that in a good cause they can cheerfully resign fortune, and even bravely send forth to the battle field, or to the still more fatal hospital, the dearest members of their household; and they hence feel lifted up above petty scoffs and political or commercial jealousies. Having proven their continued manhood and womanhood, they can look their brother men of whatever nation in the face, quietly yielding precedence where deserved, and as quietly claiming their own dues. The spirit of Hawthorne's book is strictly in accordance with this growing feeling. Fanatics, either for or against England and the English, may find too much praise or too much blame; but the impartial reader cannot fail to be impressed by the author's fairness, even by the keen-sighted appreciation of either virtues or faults resulting from a sincere and long-seated affection.

The chapter on "Outside Glimpses of English Poverty" is written as if with the heart's blood of the writer; and we may all of us ponder it well, lest some day its graphic but melancholy outlines may only too vividly delineate the condition of our own poor. Let it teach every man of us to strive without ceasing to bridge the wide chasm almost necessarily dividing rich and poor. Let us untiringly pour into that chasm love, pity, help, forbearance, our best of constructive thinking, but last as well as first, love—Christian love—until vice and despair no longer find excuse in circumstance.

We are glad again to welcome within the ranks of American literature the author whose "Twice-Told Tales," "Manse Mosses," and "Scarlet Letter" so thrilled our youthful souls; and we hope the pressure of the times, weighing heavily upon him as upon all men of imagination who have outlived their first youth, may ere long be lifted, and his mind naturally revert to the treatment of mystic themes he of all writers seems empowered to render dreamily interesting and suggestive.

Methods of Study in Natural History. By L. Agassiz. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

This is indeed a valuable work, supplying a want long felt by that class of intelligent students who, without the time or means to fathom the depths of natural science, are yet desirous of obtaining accurate and reliable information regarding its foundation and general principles. The public are deeply indebted to Professor Agassiz, for it is not every man of real science who is willing to step into the popular arena, throw aside (in so far as possible) technicalities, and strive to impart to the unlearned the valuable results of years of severe study, observation, and thought. We are happy to see that the illustrious author enters "an earnest protest against the transmutation theory, revived of late with so much ability, and so generally received." The book concludes thus: "I cannot repeat too emphatically that there is not a single fact in embryology to justify the assumption that the laws of development, now known to be so precise and definite for every animal, have ever been less so, or have ever been allowed to run into each other. The philosopher's stone is no more to be found in the organic than the inorganic world; and we shall seek as vainly to transform the lower animal types into the higher ones by any of our theories as did the alchemists of old to change the baser metals into gold."

The subjects treated are: General Sketch of the Early Progress in Natural History; Nomenclature and Classification; Categories of Classification; Classification and Creation; Different Views respecting Orders; Gradation among Animals; Analogous Types; Family Characteristics; The Characters of Genera; Species and Breeds; Formation of Coral Reefs; Age of Coral Reefs, as showing permanence of species; Homologies; Alternate Generations; The Ovarian Egg; Embryology and Classification.

Sermons preached before his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, during his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1862, with Notices of some of the Localities visited. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford; Honorary Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Deputy Clerk of the Closet; Honorary Chaplain to the Prince of Wales. Published by Charles Scribner, 124 Grand street, New York.

These Sermons are dedicated to his Royal Highness Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and are published at the request of the Queen of England, Their interest depends in part on the circumstances and the occasion of their delivery; in part upon the charm of their own quiet, simple, and elegant style, their devout and tender spirit. The scenes in which these discourses were preached are among the most famous and familiar of the sacred and classical localities, the texts chosen being always in accordance with them, the sermons illustrating their history and connecting their glorious Past with the Present of the illustrious travellers. They were preached on the Nile, at Thebes; in Palestine, at Jaffa, at Nablus, at Nazareth, at Tiberias; in Syria, at Rasheya, at Baalbec, at Ehden; on the Mediterranean, &c. Notices are appended of the spots visited during the tour of the young Prince in the East. We find in the table of contents: 'The Mosque of Hebron, The Cave of Machpelah, The Tomb of David at Jerusalem, The Samaritan Passover, The Passover on Mount Gerizim, The Antiquities of Nablus, Galilee, Cana, Tabor, The Lake of Genesareth, Safed, Kedesh-Naphtali, The Valley of the Litany, The Temples of Hermon, Baalbec, Damascus, Beirut, The Cedars of Lebanon, Arvad; Patmos, its Traditions and connection with the Apocalypse.' These notices are interesting and graphic. Places into which travellers have found it impossible to penetrate, were rendered accessible to the heir of England's crown. The visit to the hitherto inaccessible Sanctuary, the Mosque of Hebron—the Sanctuary, first Jewish, then Christian, now Mussulman, which is supposed to cover the Cave of Machpelah, to which their attention had been directed by the great German geographer, Ritter, and which has excited in modern times the keenest curiosity—is full of instruction and interest. Since the time of Prince Edward and Eleanor, this visit was the first paid by an heir of the crown of England to these sacred regions. We close our notice with a short extract from the pages of this pleasant book.

'That long cavalcade, sometimes amounting to one hundred and fifty persons, of the Prince and his suite, the English servants, the troop of fifty or a hundred Turkish cavalry, their spears glittering in the sun, and their red pennons streaming in the air, as they wound their way through the rocks and thickets, and over the stony ridges of Syria, was a sight that enlivened even the tamest landscape, and lent a new charm even to the most beautiful. Most remarkably was this felt on our first entrance into Palestine, and on our first approach to Jerusalem. The entrance of the Prince into the Holy Land was almost on the footsteps of Richard Cœur de Lion, and of Edward I, under the tower of Ramleh, and in the ruined Cathedral of St. George, at Lydda. Thence we had climbed the pass of Joshua's victory at Bethhoron, had caught the first glimpse of Jerusalem from the top of the Mosque of the Prophet Samuel, where Richard had stood and refused to look on the Holy Sepulchre which he was not thought worthy to rescue. Then came the full view of the Holy City from the northern road, the ridge of Scopus—the view immortalized in Tasso's description of the first advance of the Crusaders. The cavalcade had now swelled into a strange and motley crowd. The Turkish governor and his suite—the English consul and the English clergy—groups of uncouth Jews—Franciscan monks and Greek priests—here and there under the clumps of trees, groups of children singing hymns—the stragglers at last becoming a mob—the clatter of the horses' hoofs on the hard stones of that rocky and broken road drowning every other sound—such was the varied procession, which, barbarous as it was, still seemed to contain within itself the representatives, or, if one will, the offscourings of all nations, and thus to combine the impressive, and, at the same time, the grotesque and melancholy aspect which so peculiarly marks the modern Jerusalem. Our tents were pitched outside the Damascus Gate, near the scene of the encampment of Godfrey de Bouillon, and from thence we explored the city and the neighborhood.'

Freedom and War: Discourses on Topics suggested by the Times. By Henry Ward Beecher. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co.

We cannot more appropriately present this work to the notice of our readers, than by quoting from the editor's introduction the following passage with regard to it: 'The title sufficiently expresses the rule by which the selection was made. That rule was to choose discourses on subjects of present interest, and which, at the same time, should, as far as possible, so handle those subjects as to have a more permanent value. They have also a certain significance from their order in time. No other system will be found in the book, except a systematic purpose always to discuss the subject apparently most important at the time. Its general method is, to apply the principles of Christianity to the duties and circumstances of life; to insist on a sound and fearless Christian morality in whatever men do; and to show the increased importance of practising that morality in times like these. It is believed that, in seeking to do this, the discourses are consistent and clear in teaching God's almighty supremacy and his goodness and wisdom, faith in humanity and its future, the absolute necessity of national righteousness and of Christian equality, the substantial truth and excellence of the frame of government of the United States, the substantial nobility and courage, justice and perseverance, of the real democracy of the country, and the certain and ineffable splendor of our future, if only we are true to ourselves, to humanity, and to God.' Few men have had such ardent and devoted friends as Henry Ward Beecher; few such bitter and determined enemies. It were useless to tell his friends of the loyalty, patriotism, and ability of these remarkable Discourses; we heartily wish his enemies could be persuaded to peruse them. We believe they would find the writer far other than they deem him. We think they would find their prejudices melting away, their dislike growing into admiration, and their own souls kindling from the fire of his ardent and broad humanity. No man's opinions have been more constantly misstated, none more generally miscomprehended, than Mr. Beecher's. A man of large soul, of generous impulses, he thinks as he feels, and writes as he thinks. His thoughts are original, his imagination glowing, his sympathies all-embracing, his creed broad and flowing, his illustrations apt and graphic, his diction clear and bold, though often careless and sometimes almost grotesquely familiar;—all that he touches seems poured through his heart, and thus never fails to reach the heart of his audience. He battles with the sins and evils of his time, and is perhaps as conservative as truth will admit.