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'homes and haunts,' being derived not merely from volume, at an exceedingly cheap price. Among the publication of American "Pencillers," such as English Dictionaries that cost less than a sovereign, Miss Sedgwick, Mr. N. P. Willis, and such well- this edition of Webster's is undoubtedly the best. known travellers, but, apparently, from private We as heartily commend it in its new and surpriscorrespondence, journals, &c. &c. The purely liter-ingly cheap form, as we have heretofore done in every other."

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ary matter, even, has the tinge of a sky beyond the horizon of our Southeys and Disraelis who have loved to accumulate curiosities. By the quality no less than by the fulness and versatility of this collection have we again been led to speculate hope fully on the intense curiosity which prevails in the New World with regard to all manner of works of art and imagination, and to the thoughts and lives of those who produce them. The Athenæum also says that "it may be recommended as a plain, continuous, and conscientious narrative to all those who would like to have the events to which it refers brought before them in the compass of one book, so as to be saved the trouble of turning over many." The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, have been reprinted by Roulledge. The Literary Gazette remarks of it: "There are strains of didactic thought, humorous fancy, pathetic feeling—there is an Augustan sonority and neatness of versification-in the poems of Dr. Holmes, which by turns remind us of the Prize Poets of our Colleges of Crabbe, who minutely wrought out the homeliest themes in heroic metre-of William Spencer's drawing-room lyrics, light as gossamer and sentimental as music on a lake-and of "Whistlecraft." Yet, there is nothing like gross or direct imitation in this worthy little volume. It must be described as containing the poetry of a University man-a man of the world, too, loving social pleasures, skirmishes of wit, and exercises of intellect,-anything but a hermit, or dreamer, or martyr-student, or other such visionary passionately sick of society, and no less passionately in love with waterfalls, mountains, the moon, the sea, and some one nameless Lady."

The Athenæum likewise says, "America has its Disraeli in Mr. Arvine, who with curious research and unwearied industry, has collected in this huge volume an immense variety of the curiosities and memorabilia of literature and the fine arts. On some of these subjects the book is more copious than any other of the kind, and from the best known anecdotical works judicious selection has been made. In such works American authors have hitherto occu

pied little space, but Mr. Arvine gives to Transatlantic facts and incidents a prominence which his countrymen will contemplate with pride, and European readers regard with curiosity and interest. The full and well-arranged indexes of names and subjects render the volume as useful for reference as it is amusing for reading.

The Examiner notices MERRIAM's edition of Webster's Dictionary as follows: "Among books of reference in this country, a good English Dictionary is to be desired in most houses, and we are glad to see that an edition of Webster's Dictionary as revised and enlarged by Chauncey Goodrich, and supplied with all that can be expected in the way of pronunciation (Walker's Key being included), definition, derivation, and authority for the use of words, has been published in one thick and closely-printed

The Days of Bruce, by Grace Aguilar, is noticed by the Athenæum, as being "among the weakest of its subject was one of the highest, most hackneyed, Miss Grace Aguilar's productions, merely because and most remote in period, of those taken in hand by her during the early-closed and busy years of her apprenticeship."

The Blithedale Romance of Mr. Hawthorne, published by TICKNOR & Co. of Boston, has been republished in London by CHAPMAN & HALL. The Examiner lauds it very highly and discriminatingly. It says "the high reputation enjoyed and deserved by Mr. Hawthorne both in England and America, will neither be raised nor lowered by the 'Blithedale Romance.' The novel does not surpass in merit, we think does not equal, either the Scarlet Letter' or the 'House of the Seven Gables;' but it is a good story, full of picturesque writing and romantic incident, well marked with the distinctive stamp of Mr. Hawthorne's genius. In the selection of a quaint, unhacknied subject, Mr. Hawthorne has in his former novels shown great skill; and the 'Blithedale Romance' is another example of the same tact in avoiding worn-out themes. Blithedale is a farm on which a set of people, weary of the old world and desirous of a new order of things, join in the endeavor to establish a community of brothers and sisters, levelling all worldly rank; the fine ladies and gentlemen awake to the blast of the farmer's horn very early in the morning, to go a milking and to labor in the fields till breakfast time. The machinery of the community has not been chosen as the groundwork of a lecture for or against Communism; it is simply employed, by the way of romance, as a novel and quaint expedient for throwing together under new circumstances people with characters strongly marked, and weaving them together into a tale of abundant action and passion. The narrative is even more rapid in theBlithedale Romance' than in some of Mr. Hawthorne's former works, for example, in the 'House of the Seven Gables.' The idea of Blithedale was suggested by a similar experiment in which Mr. Hawthorne himself participated some ten years ago, at Brook Farm in Roxbury. The characters of the book, however, and the tale in which they move, are pure romance, and of the warmest color."

America as I found it, by the author of "A Memoir of Mary Lundy Duncan," republished by the CARTERS, New York, is thus noticed by the Athenæum: "This is a series of sketches of American society in which fact and reflection are pretty equally blended. What of fact the book contains relates chiefly to the educational, ecclesiastical, and philanthropic institutions of the United States, of which many interesting details are given;-the reflections are of a genial, sensible, and pious nature, and bear a tinge of Scottish Presbyterianism."

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not to bestow upon them) the classic grace of Wilson; still less do we discover in them the vigor and rough truthfulness of Consta

VOL. XXVII. NO. II.

Yet let us not be unjust to the world or to the authoress. Well do we remember the triumph she achieved by her "Rienzi,"-a

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