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this abominable practice; while thousands are injured." "I appeal to the archives of Congress, and call on those sacred deposits to witness for me." Neither can any of the frequent citations, occupying each a page or more, claim to be "maxims." A maxim, besides being a generally admitted proposition, is expected to be complete or absolute in statement, and strictly general in application; the brief statement of a universal principle.

A careful examination of the book enables us to state that it contains thirty-one sayings entitled to the designation of "maxim," not counting those which are imbedded in extended quotations from Washington's writings, The book is, in truth, a collection of short and long extracts, sometimes repeated, from the writings of Washington, his letters, messages, addresses, general orders, and will; bearing in very various ways, but only exceptionally in an aphoristic way, upon very various topics, for which see the index.

The selections appear to be fairly arranged, and may be very useful as a compendious abstract of Washington's opinions, in his own words. No man's thoughts are better worthy of consideration by American citizens; and the book will be worth owning by all such. But the title is a misnomer, and calculated to produce wrong impressions as to the character of the work. We should not have said so much about it, were it not that, especially in the case of a book of this character, we apprehend that many buyers might find their purchase of quite another character than they had supposed. We presume that Dr. Schroeder himself than whom no man is a more capable judge of such a question—would, on reflection, agree with us.

-Webster and his Masterpieces. By REV. B. F. TEFFT. We do not think this a very valuable biography of Webster, for the simple reason, that it describes him as very nearly a perfect human being: we think, indeed, that it implies as much as that he was the very greatest man that ever lived. Now, however overpoweringly transcendent the magnificence of Mr. Webster's mind and its productions within its own peculiar empire,-and there, none could esteem him more worthily than we-it is our firm belief that his character and life were marred by very great defects and faults, and that his aims were mournfully far from being set, and his successes from being ob

tained, in the noblest departments of human effort.

Again: a biography by a contemporary, must, in the nature of things-as long as men are merely human-be useful mainly in furnishing materials towards a just estimate of the subject,--not as accomplishing that estimate itself. As such, Dr. Tefft's work is and will be useful. But discussions of the political views and circumstances of any leading politician, by a contemporary to contemporaries-although, perhaps, not always entirely avoidable--are always (and reasonably), distrusted; and, therefore, inexpedient where not absolutely neces

sary.

So laudatory a biography as this must, of necessity, be faulty. The true history of a man's life should judge him; not merely admire and defend him. But, with this exception, the narrative is praiseworthy. It is clearly and easily told; and the perusal of the achievements even of so mighty a man as Daniel Webster is a most healthy stimulant to the rest of us who never can hope to equal or to excel him. The two volumes of Dr. Tefft include a judicious collection of Webster's most noted speeches and orations.

-The Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe. By the late HORACE BINNEY WALLACE, is a tribute, on the part of friends, to the memory of a young man of remarkable accomplishments, cut off, untimely, by the hand of death. As such, it is not properly an object of criticism. It contains the records of Mr. Wallace's opinions as they were left in manuscript, and without the last touches of the paternal hand. Had he lived longer, he would probably have modified some of his judgments, especially the narrow limits which he assigns to Art, and his singular views of Comte's philosophy; but, even in the imperfect form in which these writings appear, they show a mind of rare vigor, exquisite sensibility, discursive cultivation, and the noblest tendencies. The essays on the general principles of art, with which the volume opens, though they embrace little that will be new to persons who are readers in this department of philosophy, are written in an earnest spirit of conviction, and say many things, incidentally, of the deepest import, and the nicest discernment. The warm, religious feeling with which Mr. Wallace informs his topics, is one of his most delightful characteristics -relieving the most abstract research into

principles by a glow and flush of emotion. His remarks on the cathedrals of the Continent, exhibit a fine artistic perception, and a complete familiarity, not only with the science of architecture, but, what is more important, with its poetry. We know of no better series of criticism, in the same department, not excepting Ruskin's more pretentious treatment of the matter in his "Seven Lamps of Architecture." And, we might make a similar observation on the sketches of the great painters, which are full of eloquence, beauty, and profound observation. We trust that this will not be the only monument we are to have of Mr. Wallace's diligent culture and native force. His friends may rest assured that they owe it to the world to let us see his other papers, even though still more unfinished than these of the volume before us.

-BAYARD TAYLOR seems to be as industrious a writer as he is a traveller, for he gives us book after book, with as much facility as he steps from California to Cairo, or from Jersey to Japan. His last work, The Lands of the Saracen, includes his journeys through Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain, and is the second of the three books in which he proposes to complete his tour round the world. India, China, the Loo-Choo Islands and Japan, are reserved for the third and concluding volume. Many of the regions described in this volume have been often before traversed, and Mr. Taylor is enabled to say little that is novel in regard to them, though his own impressions are always vivacious and fresh; but the part relating to the voyage from Aleppo to Constantinople, through the heart of Asia Minor, has not often been explored, and is opened to us as a quite virgin field. Mr. Taylor's characteristics, as a traveller, we have before described, and we need, therefore, only to mention the publication of his work.

-Whether it was the fault of the publishers, or of some indiscreet friends, that Ida May was announced as from the pen of MRS. STOWE,--we cannot say; but that announcement has, no doubt, seriously damaged the public estimation of the work. All who have taken it up, expecting to find a new Uncle Tom in it, must have been seriously disappointed. It is not a work without talent; it is conceived with considerable vigor, and executed with ability, but it is so vastly inferior to the novel with which it was brought into relation, that we

can hardly read it with patience. The truthfulness of Uncle Tom's Cabin,-the dramatic action; the fine discriminations of character; the alternate pathos and humor, are all wanting in Ida May, of which the plot is quite improbable, the characters ineffective and unnatural, and the story simply romantic. There are several vigorous descriptions in Ida, and some scenes of remarkable power; but, as a whole, we find it on a level with the majority of stories that are published in these days. The writer would do better with a less ambitious aim, and a more quiet sphere of incident.

TRANSLATIONS.-Afraja, a tale of Scandinavia, already briefly noticed, vol. iv. p. 564, is an account of the fortunes of a young Danish nobleman who is sent, for the repairing of his patrimony, to settle in the wild region of Finnmark; of his enterprises and achievements in business and in love. The translator has not succeeded in escaping into "English undefiled," from the haunting German idioms. But they have a quaint flavor, which is, perhaps, not inappropriate to the queer remarks of the shrewd traders and shepherds of the Northland. Mr. Morris must have recognized the Yankee-like qualities of Helgestad, the foremost of his characters; for he gives him the use of the Yankee vocable "calculate," in a way not otherwise to be accounted for. "I calculate that you are right," he says. Helgestad is a very good Yankee, indeedbetter than one could have supposed a German capable of delineating. The book is extremely readable, and very pleasantly so, except that several of the good people, as well as the bad, are uncomfortably destroyed. Afraja, a cunning, but patriotic and noble-hearted old Lapland chief-a curious parallel, by the way, with his striking Indianisms, to Helgestad's New Englandish financiering-is burnt by judicial condemnation for witchcraft. His poor pretty little daughter, Gula, hopelessly in love with John Marstrand, the hero, Bjornarne Helgestad, hopelessly in love with her, and Olaf Veigand, ditto with the heroine, are summarily choked off in the Northern Ocean; and Mortund, another of Gula's lovers, a young Lapp, meant by her father for her husband, is, like Alexander McPherson,

"Shot with a bullet

Plumb through his gullet."

This "heroic practice" of extirpating all persons who become inconvenient in the

course of the story, without distinction of age or sex, as a sultan or a dey remedies his little domestic difficulties, is a most gratuitously and unartistically murderous practice. Why, when the threads of the imagined life lie in the writer's hand, should be wield the sanguinary shears, when he might weave them rather upon the pleasant distaff? When it is precisely as easyunless to a careless literary sloven-to have his story end in sunshine as to overcast it with a chilly sunset storm, should he choose the discomfort of the latter? There is enough of sorrow in real life, which we cannot expect to shun. Let us have pleasant scenes portrayed in pictures and in books. Sorrow at fictitious distress is fit, perhaps, to fill the empty heads of indolent women-it is certainly not fit for anything or anybody else. Books which end in sorrow are of the same class of untrue and morbid excitants with statues of dying gladiators, pictures of deaths by famine, of the sawing asunder of Isaiah, of the roasting of St. Lawrence. They are as proper as an anatomical demonstration, or the actual infliction of the rack, might be in a parlor, for the diversion of one's friends.

Mr. Mügge's murders-they deserve no other name-are a blemish to the book. Yet, we doubt not, that many who love to drop a sympathetic tear-in the parlor, on a lace handkerchief-will disagree with us. But in spite of that, for some of the good people in "Afraja," and none of the bad, come to good fortune, the volume is very readable, well-written, and well-translated.

-The Youth of Madame de Longueville. Translated from the French of Victor Cousin. By F. W. RICORD. Translation is a work which all think easy, but which very few can do. It is not sufficient to furnish literal equivalents, word by word, for the matter of the original. Nor is it even necessary, or always allowable, to retain the structure of the sentences, or of the paragraphs. The office of the translator is to render the foreign thought into the native thought and, to that end, the garments of the languages must be altogether and entirely exchanged. This demands acquaintance not only with the mere relative lexicography of the two tongues, but with the genius and style of thought peculiar to each, and the equivalent thoughts in each.

In these respects Mr. Ricord is hardly prepared for the work of translation. A strong French odor-if the expression is

allowable-pervades the volume. This defect makes the perusal of the book unsatisfactory; inasmuch as English words, in French idioms, communicate to the great mass of English readers only indistinct ideas.

Aside from the merely literary merits or demerits of the book, it possesses a certain kind and degree of interest, as portraying the empty, bustling, frivolous, useless life of the upper classes in France, during the tangled disturbances of the long minority of Louis XIV., and the selfish and vicious administration of Richelieu and Mazarin. Although Madame de Longueville is selected as the central personage of the book, the disconnected sketches of her unprincipled and dissipated life are quite equaled in importance by the masses of detail about men and women now as insignificant and uninteresting as Madame de Montbazon, Mademoiselle de Vigean, and that Duke d'Enghien, who won early fame by gaining the bloody fight of Rocroy,-people heard of in Madame de Sevigne's letters, but about whom nobody now cares a pin. Nor are the heartless and wicked intrigues of these empty-headed people made any pleasanter by the truly French, indifferent, and matter-of-fact manner in which M. Cousin has narrated them. He takes it as a thing right in itself, and altogether of course, that young women should marry decrepit old men, if their parents choose; and that, afterwards, they should have as many lovers as they wish, to comfort themselves. Nor has he any comment to offer, or even a disapprobatory word upon the base murders, called duels, which destroyed--within a few years-nine hundred of the gallantest gentlemen of France; the robberies, falsehood, greediness and selfishness which were the entire foul atmosphere in which the ladies and gentlemen of the Court of Anne of Austria lived and moved. We cannot count it any great advantage to American literature that it is increased by the addition of such books.

REPRINTS.-History of the Crusades. By MAJOR PROCTOR. 1 vol., 12 mo. Hildreth has occupied-in narrating the events of seventy years in the life of one nation-four or five times as much space as Major Proctor has used in the history of all Christendom, and the greatest empires of Heathenism, for three hundred years.

So compressed a work can be little more than a summary and Mr. Proctor's is a clear and comprehensive summary of the

history of the Crusades, derived, in consi-
derable part, as he honestly acknowledges,
from Mill, Gibbon, and other modern writers
on the period. We will take the liberty
here of suggesting a still shorter abstract
of the history of the Crusades, in which
each Crusade is localized by its main cha-
racteristic, in such a way that the nume-
rous class whose memories cannot hold a
bald figured date, may cling by a chain of
associations. Our list is as follows:-
:-

Abortive mobbish expeditions, about 1096, not counted as Crusades, under Walter the Penniless. Peter the Hermit, Gottschalk the German Monk, and the goat and goose; destruction of the whole crew.

First Crusade, 1096; taking of Jerusalem, and Latin Kingdom there.

Second, 1147; erection of principalities of Antioch and Edessa.

Third, 1189; nothing at all.

Fourth, 1202; Latin Empire at Constantinople.

Fifth, 1217; free access to Jerusalem. Sixth, 1238; Jerusalem in possession of Christians.

Seventh, 1245; defeat and captivity, in Egypt, of Louis IX. of France.

Eighth; death of Louis, in Tunis; abortive expedition, into Palestine, of Edward II. of England.

The profuse insertion of wretched woodcuts is a great blemish to a really valuable and well-written book. And, aside from the miserable execution of these, they are calculated to operate as impositions upon the innocent. What propriety is there in pretending to furnish portraits, either of the face, dress, or outfit of Mohammed, Zingis Khan, Bondocdar, Alexius Comnenus, or Theodore Lascaris? These absurd limnings continually remind us of the pictured forms of Ahasuerus, of Xerxes, of Adam and Eve, in the New England Primer, and are precisely as reliable. These pictures go to degrade the book to the level of those diluted concoctions which, under the name of Pictorial Histories and the like, within a few years deluged the country. In the name alike of truth and honesty, we enter a solemn protest against this most unpleasant practice, which sins both in omission and commission. It cannot give us a right idea of the appearance of the men and things in question; and, further, it does, in fact, give us a wrong one.

-Synonyms of the New Testament, by RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, is a neat little volume of 250 pages, uniform with the au

thor's two other books, on Proverbs and on the Lessons of Words. It is a careful dis cussion of the distinctions among about a hundred and fifty Greek synonyms in the New Testament. Of its precise practical value to the student of the mixed and intricate dialect of the Testament, we cannot speak. But the book is one of a comparatively new, and positively valuable character. The cautious examination and comparison of such expressions as are here discussed, cannot fail to suggest valuable new truths upon the verbal study of the Scriptures.

-A more timely scientific work could not appear than that just issued by H Baillière, of No. 290, Broadway,—we mean Latham's Races of the Russian Empire. It is a complete and accurate account of all the varieties of people dwelling under the protection of the Russian government, including all those who have been conquered by the dominant race, or absorbed into its body. It is founded upon the great ethnological and statistical map of Russia, which was published by the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, in the year 1852. Few men are more competent to write on the subject than Dr. Latham, wellknown for his "English Language," his "Varieties of Men," and his " Ethnological Notes to the Germania of Tacitus." A colored map of the whole of the Russian Empire, distinguishing the several tribes, adds greatly to the value of the work, which, also, constitutes a second volume of Norris's Ethnological Series.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

WEBSTER, AND HIS MASTER-PIECES; by Rev. B. F. Tefft. Auburn and Buffalo: Miller, Orton & Mulligan. 2 vols. 12mo., pp. 1034.

MAXIMS OF WASHINGTON; POLITICAL, SOCIAL, MORAL,
AND RELIGIOUS; by John Frederick Schroeder, D.D.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo., pp. 423.
THE YOUTH OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE; from the
French of Victor Cousin. By F. W. Ricord. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo., pp. 408.
PRESERVATION OF HEALTH, AND PREVENTION OF DIS-
EASE. By B. N. Comings, M. D. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. 12mo., pp. 208.
SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By R. C. Trench,
B. D. New York: Redfield. 12mo., pp. 250.
JAIL JOURNAL; or, FIVE YEARS IN BRITISH PRISONS;
By John Mitchel. New York: Citizen" Office.
12mo., pp. 370.

SALT WATER BUBBLES. By Hawser Martingale.
Boston: W. J. Reynolds & Co. 12mo.
THE WIDE-AWAKE GIFT; a Know-Nothing Token for
1855. New York: J. C. Derby. 12mo., pp. 812.

POPULAR TALES BY MADAME GUIZOT. Translated from the French, by Mrs. L. Burke. Boston: Crosby, Nichols & Co. 12mo., pp. 404.

WHAT NOT. By Mrs. Mary A. Denison. Philadel phia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 12mo., pp. 384. ARITHMETICAL ANALYSIS; or Higher Mental Arithmetic. By James B. Thompson, LL. D. New York: Ivison & Phinney. 12mo., pp. 192. HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. By Major Proctor. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. Imp. 8vo., pp. 480.

MILE-STONES IN OUR LIFE-JOURNEY. By Samuel Osgood. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Svo., pp. 307.

AFRAJA; a Norwegian and Lapland Tale; translated from the German of Theodore Mügge; by E. J. Morris. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 12mo., pp. 571.

NATURE IN DISEASE. By Jacob Bigelow, M. D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo., pp. 391. CLOVERNOOK CHILDREN. By Alice Carey. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 18mo.

HIGH LIFE IN NEW YORK. By Jonathan Slick, Esq.
New York: Bunce & Brother. 12mo.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND QUARTERLY REVIEW, Octo-
ber, 1854. London: Sampson Low & Son.
LEAVES FROM THE TREE IGDRASYL. By Martha Rus-
Boston: John P. Jewett & Co. 12mo., pp.

sell.

848.

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HEARTS-EASE; or, The Brother's Wife. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 12mo., pp. 618. SOUTHWARD, Ho! A SPELL OF SUNSHINE. By W. Gilmore Simms. New York: Redfield. 12mo., pp. 472.

YOU HAVE HEARD OF THEM. By Q.
Redfield. 12mo., pp. 353.

New York:

THE LANDS OF THE SARACEN; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain. By Bayard Taylor. New York: G. P. Putnam & Co. 12mo., pp. 451.

SANDERS' NEW SPELLER, DEFINER, AND ANALYZER. By Charles W. Sanders, A. M. New York: Ivison & Phinney. 12mo., pp. 168.

SERMONS FOR THE PEOPLE. By T. H. Stockton. Third Edition. Pittsburgh: A. H. English & Co. 12mo., pp. 420.

BEAUTIFUL BERTHA. By Mrs. L. C. Tuthill. New
York: Charles Scribner. 12mo., pp. 271.
OUT-DOORS AT IDLEWILD.

York: Charles Scribner.

By N. P. Willis. New 12mo., pp. 519.

THE RAT-CATCHER; or, The Magic Fife. A Story of the Olden Time. By Gustav Nieritz. Translated from the German, by Mrs. H. C. Conant. New York: Charles Scribner. 12mo., pp. 166. THE LADIES' WORK-BOOK. Containing instructions in knitting, netting, point-lace, embroidery, crochet, &c. Illustrated; 4to., pp. 98. New York: T. L. McElrath.

POEMS BY PAUL H. HAYNE. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1855. 12mo., pp. 108.

WAY DOWN EAST; or Portraitures of Yankee Life. By Seba Smith. New York: J. C. Derby. 12mo., pp. 884.

ELLEN MONTGOMERY'S BOOK-SHELF. the Wide, Wide World, &c. Children.

By the author of Mr. Rutherford's Second Volume. New York: G. P Putnam & Co. 16mo., pp. 212.

AMABEL: A FAMILY HISTORY. By Mary E. Wormeley. New edition. New York: Eunce & Brother. 12mo., pp. 466.

A GREEK READER. By J. O. Colton, M. A. Third Edition, by Henry M. Colton. New Haven: Durrie & Peck. 12mo., pp. 529.

ART, SCENERY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN EUROPE; from the portfolio of the late H. B. Wallace. Philadelphia: Herman Hooker. 12mo.

JOYS AND SORROWS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR. BY Maria G. Milward. Philadelphia: Herman Hooker. 12mo., pp. 300.

THE NEWSBOY. New York: J. C. Derby. 12mo., pp. 527.

THE THEATRICAL JOURNEY-WORK, and Anecdotal Recollections of Sol. Smith. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. 12mo., pp. 254.

IDA MAY: a story of things actual and possible. By Mary Langdon. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 12mo.

THE MOTHERS OF THE BIBLE. By Mrs. S. G. Ashton.
Boston John P. Jewett & Co. 12mo., pp. 335.
THE LAMPLIGHTER. Illustrated edition. Boston:
John P. Jewett & Co. 12mo.

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OLD KARL, THE COOPER; and his wonderful book. By Elbert Perce. New York: Charles Scribner. 12mo., pp. 227.

EXPOSITION OF THE GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Abridged for the use of schools. By John Mulligan, A. M. New York: Ivison & Phinney. 12mo., pp. 301.

BROWN'S SELF-INTERPRETING FAMILY BIBLE, containing the Old and New Testaments, with copious notes and marginal references, together with an exact summary of the several books, and paraphrase on the most obscure and important passages. By the late Rev. John Brown, minister of the Gospel at Haddington. With numerous additional notes by the Rev. Henry Cooke, D. D., LL. D. IIlustrated with numerous fine engravings. Folio. Part I. to XV. R. Martin: London and New York. [This superb edition will be noticed when completed.]

FANNY GRAY; a History of her Life. Illustrated by six colored figures. Crosby, Nichols & Co.: Boston. [One of the prettiest and best executed little divertisements for children we have ever seen. Little misses of five to ten will be delighted with it.]

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