SUMMER SUNSET LINES. ADDRESSED TO ONE FAR WEST. BY LEWIS J. CIST. Dear Mary! when the sunset glow Is fading from the Western skiesWhen sombre twilight, sad and slow, Steals o'er the rich empurpled dyes Which, like the blood from Warrior slain, Ensanguining the Battle plain, Mark where the glorious God of Day The rustling stalks of ripening corn;- From all that binds them here to stay, Day, with its labors and its cares, But ah! thou'rt never then forgot! I sit and muse upon the past, I flew to thee-now far away! I watched, this eve, the Sun's decline, Would it were mine, as thus 'tis his, I would no farther wish to go! THE HIDDEN PATH. By MARION HARLAND. Author of "Alone." New York: J. C. Derby, 119 Nassau Street. 1855. [From A. Morris, 97 Main Street. It was with something very like a thrill of pride that the writer of this notice received the solicitations of a newsboy at Folkestone on the English Channel, last November, that he would buy a copy of " Alone," just reprinted in a London Edition, and he has observed the success that has attended the publication of the second work of fiction by Marion Harland with real pleasure. To few of the competitors for literary fame is it permitted to mount per saltum into public favor, and that dreadful premier pas once taken, unlike St. Denis with his head under his arm, the author does not find the difficulty to be over. Marion Harland, however, has safely advanced beyond the point reached in her first essay in the walks of literature, and we may be assured will neither forfeit her position, nor fall behind it, hereafter. As a daughter of Virginia, as an ornament of Southern letters, we may therefore feel proud of her. (By the way, may we be permitted to remind her, in a parenthesis, that she has taken for her nom-de-plume a masculine appellation, and that she should write Marian Harland to indicate that "Alone" and "The Hidden Path" are from a female pen?) The volume before us is a gracefully-written, sweetlytold story of domestic life, with, as it seems to us, a two-fold purpose. The author endeavours first to teach the excellent moral that the surest happiness in life is attainable by a strict adherence to the "path" of duty, sometimes lying straight in advance of the pilgrim, though invested with thorns and pitfalls, at other times, obscure and "hidden," and requiring the closest examination to follow it. Along this path, the heroine resolutely moves with an independence and courage that we can not too much admire. Though somewhat too triste to be altogether loveable, Bella Conway always challenges our respect and confidence, and we can recal but a single passage in which she absolutely gives way to the weakness of human nature. This is when she breaks out in that pathetic entreaty to the abominably conceited and obdurate Mr. Willard Monmouth "Talk to me tell me that you love me," which we suppose is quite natural, but which will nevertheless be harshly criticised by the female readers of the story. The second object which the author of "The Hidden Path" appears to have in view, is utterly to demolish and explode that long-established sentimentalism, dear to the souls of novel-readers and novel-writers since the days of Clarissa Harlowe, known as "First-Love." A work appeared with a similar intent, a few months ago, under the title of "Constance Herbert," in which the beloved of the earliest passion of the heroine, turns out a very sorry character before we reach the colophon, and so we are led, long before arriving at the goal of "The Hidden Path," to congratulate Bella that she escaped the mèsalliance she was once so anxious to consummate. Marion Harland seems to join issue directly with that delightful young moralist, Mr. Clive Newcome, in his notions on this tender subject. When the dear old Colonel asks his son concerning Ethel, during the brief life-time the pen an omnipotent sceptre. Such seems to have of the first Mrs. Newcome jr. — "And are-are you fond of her still, Clive ?" that constant young gentleman makes reply "Still! once means always in these things, father, does'nt it? Once means to day and yesterday, and forever and ever we been Isabel's opinion, but then she was yet too young in her literary experience to have discovered that like all other kinds of fame, that of the writer, unless it be gath ered from genius of a commanding sort, is empty, for the most part, and transient. beautiful. MAUD, AND OTHER POEMS. By ALFRED TENNYSON. We have done, however, with pointing out defects in Now it is this sentiment which Marion Harland repu- "The Hidden Path." It were an easier and more grate. diates entirely. Accordingly, though all her dramatis ful office to point out beauties, but the reader will be at persone are benevolently married off, none of them are no loss to discover them without our assistance. They united to the objects of their early admiration, and the abound in the volume, gems of happy and eloquent desauthor seeks to make us believe that the first blossom- scription, exquisite touches of pathos, felicitious delineing of the affections is "of no consequence." Very ations of character,—all giving evidence of rare talent consoling this, certainly, to those crushed spirits, the fresh-guided by a pure and fervent love of the good and the ness and fragrance of whose heart-existence some false one has caused to wither and perish, but not likely to meet with a ready acceptance at other hands. Indeed, we doubt if so whole-souled and passionate a devotion as that of Bella for Monmouth could be transferred without weakening to the exemplary clergyman whom she subsequently marries, and despite the happy illustrations that Marion Harland gives us of the truth of her creed, are bound to dissent from it and vote with Clivy. There are faults in "The Hidden Path" that might have been, and should have been avoided. The plan of the work, for instance, too closely resembles that of "Villette," not to suggest the idea of imitation. In both, the principal character is a young girl, who disdaining to be dependent on relatives or connections, goes bravely out into the world, to maintain herself by honorable and persistent exertion. In both, she selects the vocation of teacher and becomes one of the corps of instruction in a boarding school. Nor does the resemblance stop here. In "The Hidden Path" as in "Villette," a love affair is carried on by a pert and rebellious young lady through the expedient of a nocturnal apparition. The Ghost of Mr. Waylie's Institute is the Nun of Madame Beck's Pensionuat over again. Now we do not say that Marion Harland was conscious of the similarity we have pointed out-the charge of plagiarism is too serious a one to be lightly imputed-but we do say that it is a blemish upon her performance, and that a writer of so much dramatic invention ought not to have fallen into the error. If this extraordinary compound of mysticism and misanthropy had not appeared with the name of the Engcertain that it had its origin in one of two exceptional glish Laureate on the title page, we should have been conditions of the mind-either that it came from some unhappy lunatic, whose poetic faculty had been disor dered and now vibrated discordantly, "like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh," or that it was the production of some wag, who designed an attempt on the critics by endeavouring to palm off nonsense on them for profound philosophy. Though occasionally we discover a passage of genuine and exquisite poetry, worthy of the author of Locksley Hall, the stuff so greatly preponderates, that we are tempted one hundred and odd times (there being so many pages in Ticknor and Field's edition of it) before getting at the conclusion, to throw Maud out of the window and take to some more sensible and healthful reading. And the reader is the more provoked with the performance, because he is left in a painful state of indecision, after having accomplished its perusal, as to which deserves the greater amount of censure, the story itself, or the manner in which it is told. The hero of the poem, who speaks the piece in the first person, is altogether as uncivilized and disagreeable a A graver defect yet is the needless introduction of char- young gentleman as we have met with for many a day, acters who are constantly de trop, and the consequent who grumbles and snarls at every thing and every body, falling off in the interest of the narrative while the reader with less manners than Manfred and a more unbounded is engaged with their unprofitable sayings and doings. licence than Lara; while it is scarcely necessary for us We suppose the enlistment of Alma late in the action to hint that his disjointed hexameters and other metrical might be defended on the ground that she was wanted affectations do not deserve to be considered in comparito supply a "first love" for Frank, but what other pur-son with the wild rhythmical music in which the Bypose does that insipid little outsider subserve? Who ronic misanthropes pour forth their bitter sentiments to cares anything about Alma in reading the volume, who indeed is not possessed of a desire to send her back to Chicago by the first train and bid her adieu, before two chapters of her adventures have been accomplished? We must remonstrate with the author, too, for impeding the story with those interminable discussions between Isabel and Frank. For the peace of society we ask, do authors really talk in that way? Is a writer of fiction the tedious, unmerciful speaker of speeches that Isabel shows herself? We trust and believe not. the ear. This hero, who has no name at all, like the man that was won in a raffle, is introduced to us as living in the neighbourhood of a "Hall," the owner of which is a rich lord with a son and daughter. The "governor" resides for the most part in London, and does not figure much in the dactyls and trochees of the poem, but the young people keep up the ménage of the Hall, and are thus brought in contact with Sir Grumbler. "Maud' is the name of the daughter and with Maud he falls despe rately in love, while the brother, (whom the poet calls bad names as, for instance, “that oiled and curled Assy. rian bull") very reasonably objects to the addresses of an anonymous and unamiable gentleman without resources or expectations, preferring for a brother-in-law a nobleman who comes in, of course, for some of the poet's ex parte abuse, and is styled, among other uncompli. Another error, and that a misconception of successful authorship is apparent in the career of Isabel. We would not disenchant Marion Harland of the illusion that decided and brilliant success in literature may have woven around her, but it is a mistake to suppose that women are empresses when they have won the triumphs of letters; the world is not theirs by right of conquest, mentary epithets," babe-faced." After a little, there is a the wreath of laurel is not a crown of authority nor is great dinner and ball given at the Hall to which our song, snarling lover is not invited. He dodges around the public, that no amount of genius, no display of literary house, however, all night, and tries to run away with and dramatic skill, can atone for the palliation of vice or Maud in the morning-singing to her a very sweet little the inculcation of spurious morality. Come into the garden, Maud," with a melody very like Poe's, which, if it had not been copied into ever From Messrs. Bangs, Brothers & Co. of New York, so many newspapers and thereby brought to the notice of our readers already, we should be glad to quote, as a through J. W. Randolph of this city, we have received proof that Tennyson has not lost the gift of poesy. But several of the latest publications of Bohn, whose press while Maud and her lover without a name are making seems to be never at rest. Among them is the welloff, they are intercepted by the " Assyrian Bull" and the known philosophical work-The Critique of Pure Rea"babe-faced lord"-there are hot words ending in a duel son-translated from the German of Immanuel Kant. in which Maud's brother is killed, and here the action of A good English version of this essay in dialectics has the poem is ended. Of Maud we hear nothing more, and long been a desideratum to the student of metaphysical the wretched survivor of the duel discovers, after months science. We have also, as an addition to the Standard of mental suffering, that war is the remedy not only for his remorse, but for all the ills that afflict society, and favors us with some praises of war in general and that in the Crimea in particular, in a sort of blank verse that rhymes every now and then, semi-occasionally and whenever a rhyme chances to "turn up." Finally we are led to suppose that the poet goes off to join the allied army, which he reached in time, let us hope, to be blown up at the taking of Sebastopol. Such is Maud, a morbid, splenetic, fragmentary effusion, in which false philosophy is embodied in vicious verse-quite unworthy in all respects of Mr. Tennyson. We cannot believe that it is favorably regarded even by himself and we are sure that it will not rank with the Morte d' Arthur or the Gardener's Daughter in any just estimate of his writings. A Library, a historical work to which the present aspect of European affairs will give a vivid interest, being a History of Russia, in two volumes, compiled from the most authentic sources, including the works of Karamsin, Tooke and Segur, in which the events of the Muscovite Empire are brought down to the death of Lord Raglan before Sebastopol. The second volume is embellished with a portrait of the late Emperor Nicholas. The Classical Library is further enlarged by the publication of the Natural History of Pliny, translated by two eminent Cambridge men, and amplified with copious notes and illustrations. Sixty-six volumes have now been published of the Classical Library alone, affording the English reader an introduction to the whole body of Grecian and Roman literature. By some accident we failed to receive the first volume of either Pliny or the work on Russiawill the New York agents oblige us by sending them? GUY RIVERS, a Tale of Georgia. By W. GILMORE RICHARD HURDIS, a Tale of Alabama. Same author and publisher. [From Butters & Simons, 97 Main St. LIGHT AND DARKNESS: or The Shadow of Fate. Story of Fashionable Life. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1855. [From A. Morris, 97 Main St. This work is said to be the first effort in authorship of a Virginia lady, and as such we have read it with great interest. The style is remarkably spirited, and it exhibits, besides affluence of diction, very considerable dramatic ability. Few readers, who get beyond the fifth chapter, we think, will lay the book down, and this is certainTwo additional volumes of the "new and revised edily proof that the author has not misconceived her pow- tion" of Mr. Simms' novels, which are all the more acers. With so much of commendation, we are pained to ceptable for the fact that the original editions of both add that in our judgment the novel had far better never have long since been out of print. "Guy Rivers" was, been published. It is a story of guilty love, in which a we believe, the first work of fiction that Mr. Simms gave "sallow, sublime, sort of Werter-faced man" contrives to the world, and secured for him at once that hold upon to work the ruin of a brilliant woman, who finally dies the public favor which he has never since lost for a moby her own hand. The effect is all the more injurious ment. But, perhaps, of all his works none ever excited because, while conducting the charming criminals to the such an sensation as "Richard Hurdis." There was a retribution of the catastrophe, the author seeks always tragic, grim sort of interest inspired by the life-like deto enlist our sympathies in their behalf. Claude St. Ju- lineations of this wonderful narative of blood and crime, lian is perhaps, of all the sentimental scoundrels we have that has never been equalled by any work that has ap ever read of, the most utterly base and despicable; he peared from the American press. Mr. Simms attributes treats a gentle and loving wife with systematic cruelty, the success of " Richard Hurdis," in a great measure, to deliberately plans the degradation of a confiding girl, and its having been published anonymously, and in the prefultimately accomplishes this purpose by employing a ace to the reprint, he argues with much force the advan love philtre, and yet throughout the whole of his rascal- tages of the literary incognito to young authors. But ities we are entreated to look upon him as the sport of the story of the "Avenger of Blood" could not have an unhappy destiny, the victim of the "Shadow of Fate" failed of immediate and general acceptance, from what-nay, within that gloomy penumbra, he walks always ever quarter it might have come. We trust Mr. Redfield invested with a couleur de rose. The sins of the dark- will speedily complete this new and elegant edition of eyed Florence, also, are so eloquently extenuated, from Mr. Simms' Works. her innocent flirtations on the Fifth Avenue to her sweet suicide in Rome, that we pity rather than condemn her. The author seems to have chosen for her model in novelwriting the Bulwer of some years ago, and "Light and Darkness" reminds us frequently of that gifted author's early bad manner. Most earnestly do we entreat her to pause and remember, before giving another work to the ART-HINTS. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. By JAMES JACKSON JARVES. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1855. [From A. Morris, 97 Main Street. The increased attention paid of late years to the study of the fine arts, and the growing taste for the subjects of even elegance he writes English, and whoever will pick painting and architecture stimulated by such aesthetical works as those of Ruskin, Mrs. Jameson and Lord Lindsay, render it probable that Mr. Jarves' volume will meet with a large circulation in this country and in England, where it has been published in a very beautiful edition. We have read these "Arts-Hints" with real satisfaction, and consider them well calculated to assist the formation of correct opinions upon the matters of which they treat. A MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. up these "Stray Leaves from the Book of Nature" will find a most delightful collection of essays upon the va ried phenomena of earth, air and ocean. We recognise some of his researches into the life of plants as belonging to a series of Lectures delivered by him before the Richmond Athenæum, two years ago, and received with great satisfaction by intelligent audiences. We cordially commend the book to public favor. JAPAN AS IT WAS AND IS. BY RICHARD Hildreth, Mr. Hildreth is one of the dullest writers with whom we are acquainted, and whatever he has done in the vol there except in spirit, but, with a keen New England eye, he thinks the present moment a favorable one for a book on Japanese history, and he has therefore availed himself freely of other people's labours to get up a volume for the market. The compilation of course contains much valuable matter touching the manners and customs of the people, as far as they have been heretofore revealed to Portuguese and Dutch adventurers, bat as far as Commodore Perry's Expedition is concerned, it is singularly vacuous. In foregoing pages of the present number of the Mes-ume before us has been done drowsily enough. Mr. senger, we have given a review of these volumes from Hildreth does not pretend to know anything of "Japan the industrious pen of the literary Editor of the London as it is" from personal observation, he has never been Times, which will afford the reader an excellent idea of the manner in which the task of biography has not been performed for the witty canon of St. Paul's by his daughter and Mrs. Austin. Had the work been entitled "Memorials of the Rev. Sydney Smith," no such criticism on the pious labours of Lady Holland would have been called forth. What is now before us is in the highest degree entertaining as connected with one of the brightest minds of the age, and will be of infinite value to the person, whoever he may be, that shall hereafter write such a Life of Sydney Smith as the literary annals of the nineteenth century should contain. The typography and paper of these volumes show that the Messrs. Harper are prepared to execute even better work than they have ever done before. A VISIT TO INDIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN, In the year 1853. 157 Main Street. A very readable account of adventures in the East, made up chiefly of letters written to the New York Tribune. That portion of the volume relating to Japan comprises but seven chapters, and is not so full as we had expected to find it, but Mr. Taylor explains that on leaving the Expedition he was called upon to surrender his journals to the Navy Department, in consequence of which he was unable to give as complete and continuous a narrative as he had designed. Mr. Taylor's visit to the Himalayas is described with great spirit and effect. but altogether we think the narrative unnecessarily expanded. What he tells us in 539 pages might have been told much better in 300, with a saving of paper, printers' ink, composition, valuable time and patience, to author, publishers and reader, and we can only express our surprise that a gentleman of such experience in authorship as Mr. Taylor should have failed to learn the importance of condensation. The book is beautifully printed in the best style of Mr. Putnam. STRAY LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. By M. Mr. Schele De Vere has shown us in a previous vol ume, Comparative Philology, with what propriety and LETTERS to a Young Physician just entering upon The author of these "letters" is a gentleman of wide repute in his profession, and his name on the title page will be enough to ensure them a general welcome at the hands of all students of medicine. We are not able to form an opinion, of course, of the value of the suggestions in a scientific point of view, but we can say that they are written in a pleasing style, and embody much that the young practitioner may profitably learn. PUBLISHED MONTHLY AT THREE DOLLARS PER ANNUM-JNO. R. THOMPSON, EDITOR. of easy performance and the benefits mutual. Such being the case, it was hardly to be expected that the leaders of society at that early day would trouble themselves about the future of slavery, leaving posterity to meet its own difficulties as they had theirs. But when the blacks had greatly multiplied, and certain effects of their presence both on the soil and its owners had begun to be developed, the subject generally must have become one of more frequent and grave consideration. [The following argument on a subject whose importance at the present crisis can hardly be over-estimated, was commenced more than two years since; but, owing to causes which it is unnecessary here to mention, it was thrown aside by the author when the MS. was not more than half completed. Very recently, at the urgent instance of a number of gentlemen to whom the leading view was orally but fully explained, and who thought that it should no longer be withheld from public scrutiWe do not learn that they ever questioned the ny, the task has been resumed and finished. It is hoped legality of the relation in the abstract, whether that the reader will not be deterred from a thorough perusal viewed from a political or religious stand-point. of it by its length, as nothing has been introduced which The previous history of the world had not been such as to make this a pressing case of conscience. They may have and did deprecate the needless inhumanity which often attended the traffic, and no doubt thought it hard that its subjects should be separated from their natal soil, their family and friends. But this was an evil not peculiar to Islavery, but common in some measure to all states of society; and the suffering thus occasioned was more than compensated by the happier lot which awaited them here. was not deemed essential to the proper illustration of the main position. It has been supposed that the subject was already exhausted, but if the reader will persevere, he may chance to find in this paper something novel and not the less worthy of his consideration on that account, while the elegance of the style and the clearness of the demonstration can not fail to interest and delight him. ED. SOU. LIT. MESSENGER.] This is a question which has been often asked, and to which as yet no full and satisfactory answer has been given; none such at least has fall- In a country so new and so sparsely populated, en under the observation of the present writer. as was natural, the best lands, or those most easily And this is not a little to be wondered at when cultivated, were first brought into requisition. we consider that they have been here for more And yet the task of preparing for culture the than two centuries: that the motives of those who surface demanded by our increasing numbers brought and of those who received them were pa- was toilsome and vast beyond the conception of tent and obvious; that their occupation during Europeans. The preliminary toils once over, that time has been the same with but little varia- the means of subsistence were more easily won tion, and that some of the immediate results of and this surplus labour could be expended in their presence and relation to the dominant race rearing the products of a profitable trade. And have all along lain open to view. because land was abundant while labour was Our ancestors did not solicit their introduction, scarce, a system of husbandry was devised whose but could not have been ignorant of the state of object was to exact the largest tribute from the society and government on the western coast of soil, rather than to preserve or improve it,Africa, and knowing that none could be worse, for which last indeed the kind of labour emthey may have regarded the change as in every ployed was then thought to be ill adapted. The aspect the better for the negro. A short trial inevitable effect of this system pursued too far must have convinced them that many traits of the became ere long apparent in the district first setsavage were ineradicable until after the lapse of generations; that as a race they were incapable of freedom, and that subsistence and protection in a Christian country were therefore the only equivalents that could be rendered for their la bour. While the blacks were but few and tilling a rich and virgin soil, with a boundless territory in reserve, the reciprocal duties of this relation were VOL. XXI.-81 tled, much of whose soil was reduced below the point of profitable culture, and the settlers in consequence were led to seek new fields for their efforts in the reserved territory. The slaves also at first were few, but their natural increase, which under humane treatment had been rapid, was farther hastened by fresh importations from Africa, Here then were two phenomena of ominous |