LITERARY NOTICES

Life of Chopin. By F. Liszt. Published by F. Leypoldt: Philadelphia.

Liszt's Life of Chopin! What a combination of names to wing the imagination upward into the ethereal regions of beauty, pure art, and lofty emotion! The imperial pianist discourses upon the genius and peculiar gifts of his brother musician. Before us arises a vision of the strong and fiery Hungarian, with clanger of steel, flash of spur, and ring of hoof, compelling his audiences to attention and enthusiastic admiration; and also of the gentle-mannered and suffering, but no less fiery Pole, shrinking from all rude contact, and weaving enchanted melodies and harmonies, teeming with ever-varying pictures of tender love, hopeless despair, chivalric daring, religious resignation, passionate pleading, eloquent disdain, the ardor of battle with the thunder of artillery, the hut of the peasant with its pastoral pleasures, and the assemblage of the noble, the distinguished, the beautiful, with the nameless fascinations of feminine loveliness, the witching caprices of conscious power,—while through all and above all glows the memory of the glorious past and mournful present of his beloved country. The book, in fact, opens a vista into modes of life, manners of being, and trains of thought little known among us, and hence is most deeply interesting. The style is eminently suited to the subject, and the translation of Liszt's French is equal to the original. This is saying much, but not too much; for when a cognate mind becomes thoroughly imbued with the spirit of an author, the transmutation of his ideas into another form of speech becomes a simple and natural process. To those who already know Chopin and are striving to play his music, this book will be invaluable, as giving a deep insight into the meaning and proper mode of rendering his compositions. To those who know nothing of him, and who are still floundering amid the fade and flimsy productions that would fain hide their emptiness and vulgarity under the noble name of music, this life of a true musician will reveal a new world, a new purpose for the drudgery of daily practice, and the expenditure of time, patience, and money.

The work, however, is not alone useful for those especially interested in music, but, being free from all repulsive technicalities, will be found highly attractive to the general reader. It contains a subtle dissection of a deeply interesting character, sketches of Heine, George Sand, Eugene de la Croix, Mickiewicz, and other celebrities in the world of literature and art, together with a most vivid portraiture of social life in Poland, a land which has ever excited so much admiration for its heroism, and compassion for its misfortunes.

Mr. Leypoldt, the enterprising publisher of this work, merits the encouragement of the American people, inasmuch as he has not feared to risk the publication of a work deemed by many too excellent to be generally appreciated by our reading community. He however has faith in the good sense of that community, and so have we.

Fragmentary portions of Liszt's 'Chopin,' about 60 pages out of 202, were translated by Mr. Dwight of Boston, and appeared in the 'Journal of Music.' Those portions were favorably received, and all who thus formed a partial acquaintance with the work will doubtless desire now to complete their knowledge, especially as some of the most vivid and characteristic chapters were omitted.

My Diary North and South. By William Howard Russell. T. O. H. P. Burnham. New York: O. S. Felt, 36 Walker Street. 1863. (Cloth, one dollar; paper covers, fifty cents.)

It is amusing to read over, at this stage of the war, these letters, in which the Thunderer, as represented by Mr. Russell, dwindled down to a very small squib indeed. Few men ever prophesied more brazenly as to the war,—very few ever had their prophecies so pitiably falsified. Other men have guessed right now and then, by chance; but poor Russell contrived, by dint of conceit and natural obtuseness, to make himself as thoroughly ridiculous to those who should review him in the future as was well possible. It is, however, to be hoped that these letters will be extensively read, that the public may now see who and what the correspondent really was, through whom England was to be specially instructed as to the merits of this country and its war. When we remember the advantages which poor Russell enjoyed for acquiring information, his neglect of matters of importance seems amazing—until we find, in scores of petty personal matters and silly egotisms, a key to the whole. He is a small-souled man, utterly incapable of mastering the great principles involved in this war,—a man petrified in English conceit, and at the end of his art when, like a twopenny reporter, he has made a smart little sneer at something or somebody. He writes on America as Sala wrote on Russia, in the same petty, frivolous vein, with the same cockney smartness; but fails to be funny, whereas Sala frequently succeeds. He came here to write for England, not the truth, but something which his readers expected. His object was to supply a demand, and he did it. He learned nothing, and returned as ignorant, so far as really understanding the problems he purposed to study, as he came. Those who can penetrate the depths of such pitiful characters cannot fail to feel true sorrow that men should exist to whom all life, all duty, every opportunity to tell great truths and to do good, should simply appear as opportunities to turn out a pièce de manufacture, and earn salaries. Mr. Russell could have done a great work in these letters—he leaves the impression on our minds that in his opinion his boots and his breakfast were to him matters of much more importance than the future of all North America.

Wanderings of a Beauty: A Tale of the Real and Ideal. By Mrs. Edwin James. New York: Carleton. 1863.

An entertaining little romance, which will be specially acceptable to the 'regular English novel' devourers—a by no means inconsiderable proportion of the public. Its heroine—a beauty—moves in English society, is presented to the Queen, is victimized by a rascally husband or two, and visits America, where she ends her adventures—à la Marble Faun—rather more obscurely than we could have wished, by 'enduring and suffering,' but on the whole happily, so far as sentiment is concerned. As the story contains to perfection every element of the most popular English novels of the day, yet in a more highly concentrated form than they usually present, we have no doubt that its sale will be very great. The volume contains a very beautifully engraved portrait-vignette, 'after a miniature by Thorburn,' which is worth the price of the book, and is neatly bound. Gentlemen wishing to make an acceptable gift to novel-reading friends will find the 'Wanderings of a Beauty' well suited to the purpose.

The Prisoner of State. By D. H. Mahoney. New York: Carleton. 1863.

We may well ask 'what sustains the hopes of the rebels?' when such a mass of treason as this wretched volume contains is suffered to be freely published and circulated. That the Administration can find the force to oppose open foes in the field, and yet make no exertion to suppress traitors at home who are doing far more than any armed rebels to reduce our country to ruin, is a paradox for whose solution we have for some time waited, not by any means in patience.

That a Copperhead, who from his own account richly deserves the halter, should have the impudence to publish a complaint of being simply imprisoned, is indeed amusing. But could the mass of vindictiveness, sophistry, and vulgarity which these pages contain be simply submitted to impartial and intelligent men, we should have little dread of any great harm resulting from them. Unfortunately this Copperhead poison, with its subtle falsehoods and detestable special pleading, its habeas corpus side-issues and Golden-Circle slanders, is industriously circulated among many who are still frightened by the old bugbear of 'Abolition,' and who, like the majority in all wars whatever, have accustomed themselves to grumble at those who conduct hostilities. Such persons do not reflect that a great crisis requires great measures, and that in a war involving such a tremendous issue as the preservation of the Federal Union and the development of the grandest phase which human progress has ever assumed, we are not to give up everything to our foes because Mr. Mahoney and a few congenial traitors have, justly or unjustly, been kept on crackers and tough beef. When a city burns and it is necessary to blow up houses with gunpowder, it is no time to be talking of actions for trespass.

If we had ever had a doubt of the rightfulness of the course which Government has taken in imprisoning Copperheads, it would have been removed on reading this miserable book. A man who holds on one page that every private soldier is to be guided by his own will as regards obeying orders, and on another sneers at our army as demoralized,—who calls himself a friend of the Union, and is yet a sympathizer with the enemies of the Union,—who abuses in the vilest manner our Government and its officers in a crisis like the present, is one who, according to all precedents of justice, should be richly punished under military law, if the civil arm be too weak to grasp him. It was such Democrats as Mahoney, who yelled out indignantly in the beginning at every measure which was taken to protect us against the enemy, who, when they had nearly ruined our cause by their efforts, attributed the results of their treason to the Administration, and who now, changing their cry, instead of clamoring for more vigor against the rebels, boldly hurrah for the rebellion itself. It is strange that they cannot see that they are now bringing themselves out distinctly as tories, and men to be branded in history. Do they suppose that such a revolution as this—a revolution of human rights and free labor against the last great form of tyranny—is going backward? Do the events of the last thirty years indicate that Southern aristocracy and Copperhead ignorance and evil are to achieve a final victory over republicanism? Yet it is in this faith, that demagoguism will be stronger than a great principle, that such men as Mahoney write and live.

Wild Scenes in South America; or, Life in the Llanos of Venezuela. By Don Ramon Paez. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street.

The work before us takes the reader not only through all the adventures and chances of the desperate life of the llaneros or herdsmen of South America, but also gives many startling scenes from the revolutions of Colombia, embracing an excellent biography of the truly great general Paez, the friend and colleague of Bolivar. But when we remember that it contains such a mass of valuable historical material, from the pen of a son of General Paez, aide-de-camp to his father, and an eyewitness of, or actor in, some of the bloody scenes of a civil war, and that even the description of herdsman's life is filled with deeply interesting scientific records of the natural history and botany of our southern continent, it seems strange that such a volume could appear under a title smacking of the veriest book-making for the cheap Western market.

The writer, Don Ramon Paez, who was born among the people whom he describes, and was afterward well educated in England, was probably the best qualified man in South America to depict the life of the llaneros, of whom his father was long the literal chief. Half of his pages are occupied with the account of a grand cattle-hunt, involving sufferings and adventures of a very varied and remarkable description, giving the world, we believe, the best account of wild herdsman American-Spanish life ever written. A very curious study of the character of the writer himself is one of the many interesting traits of this volume. A love of literature, of science, of much that is beautiful and refined, contrasts piquantly with occasional glimpses of true Creole character, and of a son of 'the best horseman in South America,' who is too much at home among the fierce people whom he describes to fully assume the tone of a foreigner and amateur. In this latter respect Don Ramon seems to have been influenced by regarding as models the works of European travellers, as well as by a very commendable spirit of modesty; for modest he certainly is when speaking of himself, when we consider the temptations to self-glorification which his adventures would have presented to any of the English adventurers of the present day!

The book cannot fail to be extensively read, since it is not only entertaining, but instructive. Its sketches of the causes of the continual civil wars in South America are not only explanatory, but may serve as a lesson to us in this country to give ourselves heart and soul to the Union, and to crush out treason and faction by every means in our power. If the rebels and Copperheads triumph, we shall soon see the United States reduced to the frightful anarchy of South America.