[April, EDITORIAL NOTES. AMERICAN LITERATURE -DR. KANE returned from his last arctic voyage in the autumn of 1855; he died in Cuba in February, 1857, and, in March, 1857, upon the last day of the session, the House of Representatives of the United States concurred in the joint resolution of the Senate, decreeing medals to him and his officers. The same Senate had, previously, refused to purchase a number of copies of his last work. The Congress of the United States was Patriotic service is of The great arctic problem was little in it- at the pole, Kane took the torch from their polar gloom. In doing this, he placed his hands, and threw a further light into the country among those powers that directly ledge; in doing it, he placed himself among aim to enlarge the limits of human knowdren; and, in writing his account of it, of the most eminent of that country's chilwhich we took proper notice at the time of publication toward the close of last year, he built his best and most imperishable monument. Longer experience has only verified our views. His book will have the perennial charm and interest of Robinson Crusoe. daring. He had said to her: "You shall But nature extorted the penalty of his not freeze any secret so fast, that I will not melt it from you to flow in a stream of daily knowledge by men's doors." She made no answer, but she laid her cold finger imperceptibly upon his life. austere polar silence seemed to say, "If you The probe my secret, you shall find it a fatal Medusa beauty." He Those who were admitted to the infully he labored after his return, amid timacy of the discoverer, know how faithpain and exhaustion, and uncertain but not yet disastrous forebodings. With the conclusion of his work, the nervous tension of his system relaxed, and the prints of the fatal finger became more evident. sailed to England, which offered him instantly, but unavailingly, all the honors of its homage and hospitality. He was scarcely seen in public, so rapidly did he decline. He sailed toward the equator to find a balm for the icy venom of the pole; friendly and maternal care, and died, an but he still languished in the arms of honored friend, among strangers. Every hero dies too soon for the world; but no man dies too soon for himself, who, at the age of thirty-six, has made his name and heroic memory dear to history. All heroes, who are only poets in action. It men naturally love the poets, and the springing tread, that erect form, that beamseems but yesterday that we marked that ing eye. It will seem but yesterday forever. -Ticknor & Fields have commenced the publication of the "household edition" of Scott, which is intended to be the best family edition. Waverley is already issued, and the series certainly promises to do what it is designed to do. The form is convenient, the type is clear and legible, and the whole book has the air of elegance which characterizes the publications of that firm. Of the illustrations in the specimens we cannot speak favorably. The head of Scott is good; but the other cuts are poor. The enterprise is an assured success, for the fame of Scott is permanent. He is one of the world's benefactors. He spoke ill of his own pursuits; he had no remarkable reverence for the literary vocation; he was a conservative in life and literature; but he was a man of such genial and expansive soul, so hearty, and healthy, and genuine, that we cannot wonder at the witty sigh of a friend who, speaking of the humanitarian and reform novels, and the whole modern school which he denounced, and which we defended, exclaimed: "Ah! well, Walter Scott was the last literary man who believed in shoulders." And, surely, if there were ever brawn in genius, it is in his, and we are proud and glad of an American edition of his novels worthy his fame and ourselves. -So deeply embittered is theological ink with gall, that it is not easy to treat any subject connected with theology without a trace of bitterness. The ecclesiastical journals and reviews present a bristling array of opposing articles from which the political press might almost learn malignity. But in The American Pulpit, by HENRY FOWLER, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Rochester (J. M. Fairchild & Co., New York), the author has written a series of biographical and descriptive sketches in ink as pure as that which traced the "Sketch-book" or the "Spectator." It is a book of theological portraits, but it is as friendly, and sympathetic, and catholic, as if it treated of streams and trees. It would be very difficult to ascertain, from its pages, to what particular sect the author himself belongs. The criticisms of Dr. Dewey and Dr. Williams, for instance, are equally thoughtful and perspicacious. The notice of Mr. Beecher is elaborate, evidently a labor of love, and an admirable analysis of his peculiar genius. In truth, the volume is a valuable addition to our current history; and, to the curious student of American character and life, it is full of interest and significance. The selections from the writings of the subjects are copious and characteristic, and the illustrations are by far the most living likenesses we have ever seen in engravings. -Examples from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries-First Series (C. Scribner, New York), is a little volume from one of the veterans of our literature, Mrs. SIGOURNEY. Of late years her pen flows more readily into prose than was its old wont, and in all she writes there is such evident goodness that the reader is inclined only to thank the kind hand that has arranged the little feast. Mrs. Sigourney's success is the triumph of amiability in literature. In the present work she has told the story of the life of several very different people who lived during the last century, who were distinguished for nothing so much as Christian excellence of character. There is scarcely a name of " a genius" in the list, except it be that of Franklin. The little volume is capital, and interesting reading for little people. But we could wish there had been less distinction made between what the author calls "the people of God" and the rest of the world. A formal profession of religion does not constitute a person one of "the people of God," and, to imply that it does so, is to injure the heart of the child and the cause of good morals. We do not accuse our author of any such intention. It is merely a fashion of speech-but it is a very bad fashion. - We cannot but yearn toward our own bantlings, and we greet with pride and pleasure the rollicking Scampavias of Lieut. WISE-Harry Gringo-(C. Scribner), which has lighted up many of our pages during the last year. It has a sparkling naval dash, a boisterous bonhommie, a continual vivacity, which remind us of certain strains of Willis, although the resemblance ends with the suggestion. Lieut. Wise has already a name in our literature of travel. Los Gringos and Tales for the Marines have made their mark, and we do not think Scampavias falls behind. It reads like the journal of a clever middy, with clear eyes and a quick mind; and whoever would dance over the Mediterranean, and land on pleasant and famous shores, and see a grotesque variety of life, will embark in this jolly-boat with Harry Gringo. Doubts concerning the Battle of Bunker Hill (James Monroe & Co., Boston) is a little volume in the vein of Whately's Doubts about Napoleon. It is done with skill and spirit. Poems by W. W. CALDWELL, from the same house, are pleasing, but the book is mainly valuable for containing copious translations from Geibel, one of the most popular of contemporary German poets, of whom very little is known in this country. Many of them are in the less sardonic style of Heine's little songs. -VAUX's Villas and Cottages (Harpers, New York). Mr. Vaux is a young Englishman, now for some years resident in this country, whither he accompanied Mr. Downing, of whom he was a partner in business, and in accomplishment and taste. His book is of the most valuable kind : full of admirable hints and suggestions, and abundantly and intelligently illus trated. We have constant need of such works as this, for nowhere else in the world is there such constant building and so loud a call for the union of cheapness and beauty in domestic architecture. Mr. Vaux' brings great common sense to the support of his science and skill, and has produced one of the most valuable contributions to its department we have yet had. We hope, at an early date, to recur to this volume as the text of some general observations upon the subject which it treats. -By the Wigwam and the Cabin, Redfield continues the publication of Mr. SIMMS's novels. Mr. Simms promises to rival Cooper in the number of his works, at least. They have attained a distinct place in our literary history, but they can hardly be called popular or familiar. In spite of the stirring scenes in which they are laid, and the often wild and striking adventure with which they abound, they have an undeniable tendency to prosiness, and the interest of description in them, which necessarily soon tires, is superior to that of characterization. In respect, however, of constructive talent and affluence of production, Mr. Simms takes precedence of any other of our distinctive southern authors. Mr. Wirt and Mr. Legaré, who are usually quoted as the Pillars of Hercules of our southern literature, were both polished, and graceful, and accomplished essayists; but they displayed none of the continuity of Simms. It still remains a marvel to us why the name of the distinguished novelist was omitted in the list of gentlemen appointed by the Savannah convention to engender and foster a peculiarly local literature for the south. -The Minnesota Hand-book, for 1856-7. By NATHAN H. PARKER. Boston: Jewett & Co. The Iowa Hand-book for 1856. (The same.) Minnesota and Dacotah. By C. C. ANDREWS, counselor-at-law, editor of the Official Opinions of the Attorney-General of the U. S. Washington: published by R. Farnham. These books are all useful and interesting, but will disappoint those who expect to find in them careful descriptions and judicious estimates of the qualities and promises to emigrants of different parts of the vast region they relate to, or even full and exact data by which they may form a satisfactory judgment, without laborious personal examination for themselves; they have all the quality, and produce the impression of advertisements, and the reader is prepared to find, at the conclusion of each of Mr. Parker's, an offer of his services as a general real-estate broker. Mr. Andrews's is scarcely less profuse in the application of superlative adjectives, indiscriminately to the soil, scenery, townsites, editors, and tavern and shop-keepers, with which he either came into personal contact, or of which or whom he has occasion to speak from rumor. We regret that he should not have given a more comprehensive and far-reaching judgment upon the character and destiny of even the small portion of Minnesota and Dacotah which came under his personal observation. One letter, of seventeen pages, is devoted to the bar of Minnesota, and commences as follows:-"I have not yet been inside a court of justice, nor seen a case tried, since I have been in the territory. But it has been my pleasure to meet one of the judges of the Supreme Court, and several prominent members of the bar." Hence the propriety of a legal essay, of which six pages are quoted from Justice Talfourd. A critical study of our new settlements of the Northwest, if made by a competent person, not completely magnetized by the universal speculating and puffing disposition of the inhabitants, would afford materials for a very valuable and interesting addition to our libraries. 439 PUTNAM'S KALEIDOSCOPE. "A particular arrangement of reflecting surfaces." A TOWN ECLOGUE.-The Home Journal published, a short time since, a delicate bit of satire, in the form of a dialogue between three poets of the modern school, who are bewailing the decline of taste (i. e. the rejection of their manuscripts), in front of Ticknor & Fields's book store. The writer, with most exquisite irony, has put the current forms of expression-halfcento, half fluent nonsense-in the mouths of the speakers, so as to make the absurdity still more willful, as for instance, the half-cento style FIRST POET. "No more shall Corydon in Arcady Pipe to his Phyllis with the pastoral reeds." "No more shall Commerce be all in all, and Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note." "Sweeter than peach-blooms in untrodden TENNYSON. "Blacker than sloe-buds in the front of March." FIRST POET. Two ragged and starved knights of poesy." (To Bayard Taylor) "we are 'squires Now the half nonsense : "The rare old gods are tumbled from their The hamadryads and the roguish fauns "Rare old gods!" is capital; "dearth" is a felicitous substitute for "scarcity;" "zones" rhymes with "thrones," and is purposely inlaid so as to show the new-school method in its broadest light, “the moonlight lonely in the lawns" heightens the absurdity, being real poetry, and therefore the more incongruous. SECOND POET. "There's my last poem-'The Lamentation!" Well, Orpheus ne'er breathed such music in his shell; But even Ticknor couldn't make it sell!" Orpheus breathing "in his shell," is a hit. THIRD POET. "I would not curse the planets of my day:" Bless his stars, for not cursing the pla nets. "I would not weep my little life away, "The myths have flown. But O, thank God, Break with as grand a music on the pines, What a "silver shiver" is being left to This is too commonplace; we would suggest, "The lily reddens and the wild rose pales." as more striking. "And spring comes to us beautiful and fair." The spring comes to us in place of our going to it. "The brooklet sings; the yellow hauberked bee Flies with the robins through the summer leaves." A hauberked bee flying with a robin has probably never been seen by any living person. The adjective "hauberked" is peculiarly good; "corsleted" having been done by earlier poets, "hauberked" has an air of originality. "The autumn's golden fingers gild the grain." Sweet and albuminous image; and autumn's gilding the grain of spring, excellent! "Nothing seems old and wrinkled but the sea, Which o'er some strange and awful secret grieves." The idea of a submarine secret hidden in the bosom of the ocean-very Richard the Thirdish! But here come the big lines "And the great camel-mountains that have lain On the green deserts since the world was made." Camel-mountains lying down on green deserts! A fine touch of humor. "The gods are dear! (Schiller) But with them did not die The spell of beauty, nor the light and shade, And the deep yearnings of Divinity-" As excellent a piece of nonsense as Pope's "Lines by a person of Quality." The divinities are dead, but the yearnings of divinity survive; they leave behind them the spell of beauty, light and shade, in fact, a complete stock in trade, for a poet. "Ourselves are mean or noble; we are fate: We mould our destinies like plastic clay Shaping a hero or a recreant-" The rest is "only leather or prunella." "-you say, We are poor laggards on the trail of rhyme, Born in the sundown of the dregs of time." Or, "We are poor laggards on the trail of time, Born in the sundown of the dregs of rhyme." Either way, how trenchant the satire! "Know ye, faint-hearted, ye disconsolate, That who sings well can never sing too late." No one will pretend to dispute the value of this axiom. "Now I! (ego) the humblest of the singing train ms That ever felt the longing and the pain, And all the glorious ecstasy of songI, (ego) in the sweetest of New England TOWNS. Videlicet, Boston! The bathos of these few lines wonderfully neat and wellturned. "Touched with the freshness of this sunny June; Filled with the scents and beauty of the downs;" "All in the Downs."-GAY. "Wild with the breezy uplands (Beacon street and the State House), and the strong, Delicious voices of the wind in tune, (?) Have felt a passion and a power to say Something above the nothing I have said; And ere the summer shall be cold and deadEre the cool leaves be flushed with hectic red, I shall have given you my passion lay (exit)." To this poet, One and Two sneeringly respond, because they know he can't do it. Whoever wrote that little eclogue in the Home Journal, has a most delicate appre ciation of what is called "transcendental poetry." The satire is benevolent as it is just. There is scarcely a line of that mock-heroic dialogue, in front of Ticknor & Fields's store, that is not barbed with wit. With some regret, we are compelled to publish the following verses, written in ten minutes, under peculiar circumstances, by a gentleman in affliction; but, as they afford a lively contrast to the above, the reader will, no doubt, appreciate the differ ence: "TO THE FIXED STARS. "Ye stars that are the jewelry of heaven! Into this vegetative brain, whose sap Like bright diaphanous harp-strings; I you know! But not for these, but not for these I moan- And would you know who thus addresses you, Your astronomic ophicleides and flutes- Mine oyster!-you its pearled shells!" - THE ACADEMY OF DESIGN-SPRING EXHIBITION.-Formerly the annual exhibitions have been limited to new pictures, or, rather, to original pictures, never before shown in any public gallery; but we learn it is the intention of the Academy, this year, to indulge the lovers of art with |