Slavery Discussed in occasional Essays from 1833 to 1846. By LEONARD BACON. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1846.

WE regard this as the fairest exhibition of the general New England sentiment on the subject of Slavery, as well as among the most practical and common-sense discussions of this perplexing question, which we have as yet seen. The public mind of the north, religious as well as popular, is divided on this subject, a part of it sympathizing much more strongly with the slave's condition than the rest; yet the general sentiment is decidedly conservative in the movement to benefit or change that condition, and as a fair exhibition of what that sentiment is this book may be safely taken. A very little more deference perhaps, in the first and second letters published in the Evangelist, might be due to the standing and numbers of those in the opposition; yet as a book from whence a perfect stranger might obtain a tolerable insight into the general mode of New England thinking, we place it first.

As a common sense and practical view of the subject, as now presented for the popular action of the better spirit of the nation, this book may also be received. Here is nothing

but the most determined hostility to slavery itself, as an unnatural and soul-debasing system-cursing both master and slave-and cursing the very soil on which it has being, as by a stroke of God's vengeance; hostility also to the system as it began, and as it has grown to its present stature of disfigurement in this country;-but there is no grasping at individual words and texts of Scripture, and following out abstract ideas till they lose shape and consistency, and run out of the circle of all human or possible duties-to the exclusion of the great doctrine of a choice between evils every where acknowledged on all other subjects, save in the heated air of partisan strife, or in a few mad houses. The broad spirit of Christianity is hostile to, and directly calculated to rid the nation and earth of, this and similar gigantic systems of sin; but the law of benevolence may recognize the fact, that to separate an evil which has grown to enormous stature in the earth from something else with which it has become closely intertwined, a greater evil should not be done by the violent process of disruption; and here if the friends and op. posers of the anti-slavery Society could but see alike, they might be combined in some sort of action, as we believe they are to a greater extent

than even they themselves think, affiliated in feeling. This book of Dr. Bacon's would help them so to see, if it could be perused in the true intention and spirit with which it seems written. The duty of tolerating a wrong till the wrong can be duteously righted, is in our judgment the great thing lost sight of in discussions on this subject-an oversight not prominent in this volume. The book is not a discussion of the whole broad subject of slavery, but has most to do with certain temporary affairs, as we learn from the preface and last half of the volume; yet so far as it goes, and in the ground it goes on, the principle lying at the basis of all right action on this subject is fully recognized, and is presented with a plausibleness and perspicuity tending to lead others to the conviction of its truth. Entertaining these views of the book, we highly commend it.

Memoir of the Life of Jeremiah Evarts, Esq., late Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; by E. C. TRACY. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1845.

JEREMIAH EVARTS was one of New England's greatest men. He was intellectually, morally and practically great. There are few men, who to such rare intellectual gifts, and still rarer intellectual discipline, unite a moral and religious character so just and severely excellent; and there are still fewer, who turn such capacities so cheerfully and so totally to practical results. The results with which Evarts' labors and name are identified, are too nearly related to the moral and religious history of the country, and especially of New England, to suffer his name readily to die. His active and important services in the Unitarian controversy-in connection with the formation of the Board of

Missions-and in the character and direction which he, more than any one man, gave to its plan-and in the boldness and believing ardor with which he urged on its enterprises-and his noble, nay, his splendid services, in connection with the question of Georgia and the Indians have given him a higher than any mere earthly fame. When he died, it was felt that a great man had fallen in Israel.

Had a Memoir of Evarts appeared soon after his death, it would have attracted general attention, and secured a rapid sale. We regret that this Memoir has been so long delayed; but we can assure our readers that it is full of valuable information, and presents topics of the highest interest. It is written in a chaste and severe style, with no attempt at ornament, or eloquence, or vivid painting. In all these respects it is in the strictest keeping with the character of its subject. We should have liked more personal memoirs, and a fuller exhibition of the man in his every day garb; and yet we suppose Evarts was so absorbed in the objects for which he lived, and was so controlled and possessed as it were by the principles and emotions that moved him, that there was less material for narrative of this sort than is usual. Perhaps also, the characteristic modesty and severe taste of the author of this book, and his near relationship to the subject, repressed much that might have been furnished.

The book is one of great value. Few biographies are so interesting and instructive. As rich in information on the most important topics connected with religious movements which are to be memorable when Waterloo is forgotten, and as presenting a model of character to the religious men of our day, it can not be too highly praised. We trust it will be extensively circulated. It would be a reproach to us New Englanders, if we should seem

to forget the name of Evarts, or not care to cherish this memorial of his services and of his worth. It would lead us to ponder the question, whether our piety and morality were not both of too degenerate a kind, to care to be put to shame by so severe a comparison.

Typee: A Residence in the Marque. sas; by HERMAN MELVILL. In two parts-part first. New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1846.

WE were not disposed at first to say any thing against this volume. The rather free and easy style in which it is written, and the sort of clever-heartedness that seemed indicative of the author's disposition, made us suppose that whatever errors of fact the book contained were probably unintentional, and that its statements with some allowance might be received. On reading farther, however, we entirely changed our views; for it is difficult to believe that the author was not actuated, either by a perverse spirit of intentional misrepresentation, or that he is not utterly incapable, from moral obtuseness, of an accurate statement. If we were to sum up the author's mind, gathered from his whole book, we should say he was one who had first been fretted out of good humor by civilized life; that he had then become a wanderer until he had forgotten his ill nature, and also the advantages of civilization; that he had then chanced to be thrown, for a while, on the Sandwich Islands, where he perhaps came into uncomfortable collision with the civil authority, which engendered a special prejudice against those who were striving to civilize those islands; that he had then been wandering two or three years longer in various parts of the earth, till what he remembered of the Islands of the Pacific had become a sort of confused mass in his own brain; after which he came to this country, and sat VOL. IV.

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down to write a book. These facts seem to be scattered along through the volume. This moral obtuseness appears, whenever there is an opportunity for exhibiting a correct spirit. No opportunity slips by for giving a glowing description of savage life, and for launching quips and small anathemas against civilization. For missionaries and missionary labor, except in general,-he has a special abhorrence. The cause of Missions is a good thing-except where it raises man from cannibalism to civilization. If he meets a native female Islander, she is a goddess;-ifa missionary's wife, she is a blowzy looking, red-faced, fat oppressor of the poor native-reducing him to the station of drudge. All statements made by missionaries are, with slight exceptions, infinitely exaggerated; and those whose money is asked for the blessed work of sending men to elevate the character of the savage, had best be careful that their money does not go into other channels. The vices of savages are much overdrawn; and for the vices that do exist, their counterpart, or what is worse, is found every where in Christian nations. Of truths of general history he seems to know nothing. The fact of the depopulation of the Sandwich Islands, seems to him to be something new; and this is specially brought about by the efforts of missionaries and their hypocrisy. The fact that wherever civilization comes in contact with savage life, there the savage wastes away; or at least that this has been so, wherever the Saxon stock comes into contact with it; he never thought of;-and now for the first time seeing the fact he gives his own crude explanation of it, and would have the world then receive his volume as a work of authority. Now justice to the cause of truth demands that we say, that whosoever shall read this book, and its state. ments touching the Islands of the Pacific, should ask themselves a mo

ment as to the capability of a man to give an accurate statement of moral facts, when, according to his own showing, he has not been in a course of life calculated greatly to improve his moral eye sight. They should think who and what is writing, when such facts are recorded; and then, though they may not think the writer intends to misrepresent, they will at least be prepared to resist the false impressions, which a book with such statements is most certain to produce. The book is not without literary merit. It is a very companionable one. As a specimen of the lighter writing of the day, it is entitled to notice. But as to the writer's ability to treat on some of the matters of his volume, it would rank well with Joseph Smith's competency to give an exegetical work on the book of Genesis, or Bishop Southgate's to pronounce on the authenticity of an ancient MS. among the Armenians of Turkey.

Congregationalism and Methodism; by Rev. Z. R. HAWLEY, of South Norwalk, Con. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Co., 1846.

WE welcome all judicious books on this subject-not altogether from the ability of the books themselves, or from the good they may do, but from the fact that they evince a turning of the minds of the people to the subject, out of which attention we expect the good. We rely most upon that sentiment of the times which grows out of the civil and ecclesiastical condition of the country, for a genuine love of Congregation alism. Books may do much, but the form of our civil state works, with tremendous effect, for the increase and support of Congregational churches. A man, in order to become a consistent Methodist or Episcopalian, must first be an inconsistent republican; and we rely on the influences which tend to make the consistent civilian, for eventually

opening the eyes of men to the arrogating spirit of every system of church polity, which is not based on the republicanism of a just equality and the Scriptures.

This work of Mr. Hawley's is, on the whole, a judicious performance. It seems to have been demanded by local circumstances, and possesses thus a practical directness both in plan and style, which will help its circulation. Its object is to present Congregationalism and Methodism in contrast, and by opening the eyes of people to facts, lead them to renounce the latter. If the work is read, it will do this.

Plea for Western Colleges, a Discourse delivered before the Society for promoting Collegiate and Theological Education at the West; by Rev. ALBERT BARNES. Philadelphia: Wm. Sloanaker, 1846.

THIS is an able and a timely effort, exhibiting throughout that clearness of thought and largeness of heart, which characterize the author. It ought to accomplish much for the cause which it pleads so eloquently. We commend to the attentive perusal of our readers, his portraiture of western character. It is worthy the attentive study of every man who loves his country and the principles of Protestant religious freedom. The author admits that there is in the West, a great want of knowledge, but he denies that there is now, or that for a long time to come there is to be, any want of mental power, or activity. Ignorance there is, but it is not petrified ignorance. Mr. Barnes seems to us, in this part of his discourse, to have struck a very rich vein, and one which it is needful the most gifted minds of our country should work, if possible, to exhaustion. There surely is no question of more thrilling interest, than the results of that new and peculiar combination of causes, which

is forming, and under God is destined to form, the character of the mighty republics of the "great valley.' Mr. Barnes justly maintains, that the past history of colonization furnishes no parallel, and yet on those results hang, must hang, to a great extent, the future destinies of the human race. It is surely time that the intellect, the piety and the philanthropy of the nation, should awake to the investigation of this momentous question.

After having thus displayed the character and tendencies of western mind, Mr. Barnes exhibits, in a forcible and impressive manner, the fitness of that system of education which has made New England what she is, to accomplish the great object of directing the mighty energies of the West into their proper channels, and securing their application to the great ends of human well-being.

We hope this discourse may have a circulation both East and West, (for it is nearly equally adapted to both meridians,) corresponding with the reputation of the author, and the magnitude and importance of the subject. If so, we augur much good from its publication. American Christians ought not to be sleeping over an interest so vital and so near home.

The reader will also find in this discourse, a very satisfactory exhibition of the views and motives of the Society whose cause it pleads, and of which Mr. Barnes himself is a director.

Unconscious Influence: a Sermon; by Rev. HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D., of the United States, preached at Fetter-Lane Chapel, March 29th, 1846.

WE find this Sermon in "The Pulpit," a London publication, similar to our "National Preacher"; and we read the discourse with something of pride for its American

origin, as well as pleasure at the fact that its author is once more on Puritan soil. Mr. Bushnell has been long absent; his friends had become almost impatient for his return; a multitude will welcome again the looks and tones and masterly mind that have so often roused dormant energies within them, and stirred founts of sentiment and emotion till they for the moment shared the preacher's own force. We welcome Mr. B. as one of the strong arms of the NEW-ENGLANDER; the shocks of whose blows not a few of our readers remember. From this sermon we take the following, as evincing that calm, easy energy, for which Mr. B.'s finest efforts are remarkable.

"But you must not conclude that influences of this kind are insignificant, because they are unnoticed or noiseless. How is it in the natural world?

Behind the mere show, the outward noise and stir of the world, nature always conceals her hand of control, and the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye, for example, or heard with the ear, the exertions of that tremenduous astronomic force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical universe together? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere fire-fly spark in comparison; but because it glares on the cloud, and thunders so terribly in the ear, and rives the tree or the rock where it falls, many will be ready to think that it is a vastly more potent agent than gravity.

"The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. Not that the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety, in the fact that their unconscious influence is the