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since all the Bells selected incidents and persons of a singular character, produced by circumstances of a rare kind, or arising from isolated modes of life. In the prose works, the story, however strange and coarse, was consistent with itself, and distinct in its purpose. In the larger narrative poems by Currer Bell, both these qualities are wanting; there is often neither head nor tail: or, when the story is distinctly told, it is not only unlikely, but inconsistent with itself. As far as execution is concerned, the poems under the signature of Currer are entitled to the preeminence. They exhibit more power and possess a greater interest: but this is not conclusive as to difference of authorship. Part of the comparative inferiority of the others may arise from the greater quietness of a small or the triteness of a common subject; it may be accident or even

art.

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The essence of poetry- that quality so difficult to define yet so easy to recognize is rare in the volume. Of the formal and secondary properties there is a good deal. The poems have frequently much strength of thought and vigor of diction, with a manner which, though degenerating into mannerism, is very far removed from commonplace; while in the poorest" stanzas," without a subject at all, there is still a style which separates them from the effusions of poetasters. The effect of the volume, however, is by no means proportioned to the abilities possessed by the authors. The novels of the Bells have stopped short of an excellence that seemed attainable, from illchosen subjects, alike singular and coarse. This defect is visible enough in the poems; but a greater cause of ill-success is a disregard of the nature of poetical composition. Where the knack or gift exists, verse can possibly be written with as much certainty as prose, if with less readiness and in less abundance: but the result is the kind of poetry which is not endured by gods, men, or bookstalls. If the structure of the piece does not require more thought than in prose, it requires as much; and, most assuredly, an incident or a narrative that would never be ventured in plain prose, is not from its excess of incongruity adapted to verse. Yet "Pilate's Wife's Dream," Gilbert," and perhaps nearly all the story pieces by Currer Bell, are really in this predicament. As regards the sentiments and composition" of poetry, there is no doubt but that a careful selection of the thoughts, and the exercise of the labor lima are more essential than in prose. Few persons who write down any sudden thoughts that strike them would dream of publishing them in prose; and wherefore in verse? A prom

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ising idea rises in the poet's mind, and he commits it to paper; but time is needed to test its value-careful labor to elicit its full proportion, and to clothe it in the most apt language; after all, it may be doomed to the flames, as falling short of necessary excellence. We suspect such kind of care has not been bestowed upon this volume: the indispensable arts of selection and of blotting are yet to be learned by the Bells. If, as seems not unlikely, they are infected with a rage for literary experiment and an itch of writing, they will by no means fulfil the expectation which some have formed of them, or even hold their ground; especially as their experience or their taste seems limited to one kind of life, and that both peculiar and extreme.

One merit belonging to the Bells, especially to Currer, is occasionally found in these pieces,

an easy naturalness, that imparts strength to common things without impairing their homely truth. Such are these lines; which, however, open a tale without intelligible drift.

"MEMENTOS.

"Arranging long-locked drawers and shelves
Of cabinets shut up for years,
What a strange task we've set ourselves!
How still the lonely room appears!
How strange this mass of ancient treasures;
Mementos of past pains and pleasures;
These volumes clasped with costly stone,
With print all faded, gilding gone;
These fans of leaves, from Indian trees.
These crimson shells, from Indian seas -
These tiny portraits set in rings -

Once, doubtless, deemed such precious things;
Keepsakes bestowed by Love on Faith,
And worn till the receiver's death;
Now stored with cameos, china, shells,
In this old closet's dusty cells.

"I scarcely think, for ten long years,
A hand has touched these relics old;
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears,
The growth of green and antique mould.
"All in this house is mossing over;
All is unused, and dim and damp:
Nor light, nor warmth, the rooms discover-
Bereft for years of fire and lamp.

"The sun sometimes in summer enters
The casements with reviving ray;
But the long rains of many winters
Moulder the very walls away.

"And outside all is ivy, clinging
To chimney, lattice, gable grey;
Scarcely one little red rose springing
Through the green moss can force its way.
"Unscared the daw and starling nestle
Where the tall turret rises high,
And winds alone come near to rustle
The thick leaves where their cradles lic."

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THE CHOLERA. As with all the ills of life, and especially with this impending calamity, prevention is both easier and better than cure, we are desirous of helping to give circulation to the plain and practical instructions given for this purpose by the Committee appointed by the London College of Physicians.

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They say: that in a district where cholera prevails no appreciable increase of danger is incurred by ministering to persons affected with it, and no safety afforded to the community by the isolation of the sick. The disease has almost invariably been most destructive in the dampest and filthiest parts of the towns it has visited. A state of debility or exhaustion, however produced, increases the liability to cholera. The Committee, therefore, recommend all persons during its prevalence to live in the manner they have hitherto found most conducive to their health; avoiding intemperance of all kinds. A sufficiency of nourishing food, warm clothing, and speedy change of damp garments, regular and sufficient sleep, and avoidance of excessive fatigue, of long fasting, and of exposure to wet and cold, more particularly at night, are important means of promoting or maintaining good health, and thereby afford protection against the cholera. The Committee do not recommend that the public should abstain from the moderate use of well-cooked green vegatables, and of ripe or preserved fruits. A certain proportion of these articles of diet is, with most persons, necessary for the maintenance of health. The Committee likewise think it not advisable to prohibit

the use of pork or bacon; or of salted, dried, or smoked meat or fish, which have not been proved to exert any direct influence in causing this disease. Nothing promotes the spread of epidemic diseases so much as a want of nour ishment; and the poor will necessarily suffer this want if they are led to abstain from those articles of food on which, from their comparative cheapness, they mainly depend for subsis tence. The Committee also recommended the establishment of dispensaries in those parts of the town which are remote from the existing medical institutions; and distinct cholera hospitals, which it will require some time to organize, and which they believe will be found to be absolutely necessary, should the epidemic prevail in this metropolis with a severity at all approaching that which it manifested on its first appearance in England. In conclusion, they urge on the rich, who have comparatively little to fear for themselves, the great duty of generously and actively ministering to the relief of the poor while the epidemic prevails; bearing in mind that fuel, and warm clothing, and sufficient nourishment are powerful safeguards against the disease.

The Paris papers announce the death in England of M. Vatout, a member of the French Academy - a writer of considerable talent-at one time President of the Council for the Conservation of Civil Buildings in France - and recently Chief Librarian of the (now broken) Crown.

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dilection for that race. The same paper states
that the middle window of the Stiftskirche,"
at Stuttgart, is now adorned by a large glass
painting, consisting of two compartments; the
larger representing the Crucifixion-the smal-
ler the Entombment. The work of Art is
designed by Neher, and painted by the broth-
ers Scherer of Munich. Among the pictures
in the Exhibition at Cologne, A. Schroedter's
"Faust in Auerbachs Keller," after Goethe's
fiction, deserves to be particularly noticed.
"The artist," says a correspondent in the
Allgemeine Zeitung, "has given us uncon-
ciously an allegory of the doings of the pres-
ent day. What else do we see but revellers
intoxicated with the wine of Liberty? There
where the liquor overflows, red flames arising,
- and behind the tumultuous uproar the devil
stands grinning his

Den Teufel spürt das Voelklein nie
Und wenn er sie beim Kragen hätte."

The doings literary or artistical of our periodical contemporaries are not formally before us for comment. and it is not often that we go out of our way to take critical notice of them. The pictorial leader however, in last week's Punch is a production so striking that we are tempted to turn out of our ordinary course for its sake. Within the compass of an epigram we have there a great epic-and the penciled jest passes out of its professional domain into the region of the sublime. The humor of the intention has grown majestic in the execution. The title is The Great Sea Serpent of 1848;" and our readers must look at it if they would feel its meanings as we do: but thus they are in our prose version. Upon a sea, dark and wild with tempest, the Sovereigns of Europe are tossing in one frail boat that has neither oar nor sail. The name of the boat is the Ancien Régime; and the rudder is the hand of King Louis Philippe who has steered it into a fearful and majestic Presence. Right in the course of the boat has An ingenious discovery, likely to be useful to risen up the great Sea Serpent of 1848! Coil collecters of old engravings, has just been made. after coil of the monstrous reticulation shows by a young man-a Mr. Baldwin. It is, the amid the seething waters, to the very limits of means of splitting into two parts one sheet of the plate; suggesting fold after fold of the paper, so as to separate the engraving in front same. Terror stretching beyond what that from the text which may have been printed at can hold or kings can see save with their the back-often to the obscuring of the former. fears. The neck rears itself out of the waters, We have seen a leaf thus divided; in which crowned by a woman's face, with the calm, the one part shows the engraving perfectly clear stern, passionless, majestic look of Egyptian from the previous confusion of the lines that sculpture-only more threatening; and on showed through-the other exhibiting the text the Phrygian cap is written "the name of as if had been printed on a page with a clean the Beast LIBERTY. The scared look of back. Each page is as sound as if it had been the royal puppets, brought thus suddenly into originally of a distinct fabric. The discovery presence of the great social secret which the will probably be valuable applied to drawings Sea of Ages has kept from them so long, con- by the old masters; who were frequently in the trasts wonderfully with the grand, still ex- habit of making studies on both sides of the pression of the face which seems immortal for same piece of paper. We are curious te see if the time, as the body seems endless for space. the agency by which the separation is effected— The picture is full of fine suggestions. The and which, for obvious reasons, is yet a secret Sovereigns-all "in the same boat"-show-be such as may be applied to drawings withlike unreal figures in presence of this great and sudden truth. They resemble so many toys carved out of wood, before the terrible apparition that frowns on them like a god. The sketch is a wonderful one, we repeat. It bears for signature the initial D.: - which represents, we persume, the name of Doyle.

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out chemically disturbing their constituents. The application of the means to letters and manuscripts for mounting and illustration, is obvious. We will return to the subject when we have fuller information. Since writing the above, we have seen Mr. Baldwin's discovery applied to the division of the leaf of a common newspaper. A sheet of the Illustrated London News, on which was printed the wood-cut from Maclise's large picture of the 'Knight arming for Battle,'-exhibited at the Royal Academy last year,-being so divided, presented the engraving free as if it had been printed on very thin paper-like an India-paper impression. Some prints from the Pictorial Times were similarly treated,-and all with equal success. |-Athenæum.

SHORT REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

POEMS BY JOHN G. WHITTIER. Illustrated | reader. On the other hand there is a spirit by Billings. Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co. 1849.

This is, both internally and externally, a truly beautiful volume. The engraver, the printer, and the binder have successfully exerted themselves to produce a book which speaks highly for American taste and skill, and is an honor to the enterprising publisher, under whose auspices it is presented to the public. Above all, we must award our meed of praise to the engravings, which appear to us to be but little, if at all, inferior to the illustrations in the best of the English annuals. But it is more especially of the pearls con

tained within this brilliant shell that it is our

task to speak. Of John G. Whittier's capabilities as a poet we are partly willing to accept his own estimate. He says, in his Proem, that

"The rigor of a frozen clime, The harshness of an untaught ear,

The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor's hurried time,
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and
strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace
No rounded art the lack supplies." &c.

We certainly do not find in the poetry of Whittier that exquisite felicity of rhythmical structure which makes the lines of Longfellow so musical, nor the tender gracefulness which is shed over the verses of Bryant. This, we suppose, is all that the author means; for if his ear be untaught and harsh, we can discover no traces of it in any "jarring" words or sounds that are offensive to the

of fervor and zeal, an earnestness and a determination about these poems which must strike a responsive chord in the human heart, and carry with them the feelings and sympathies even of readers whose opinions may not be in unison with those of the stern Quakerpoet. And this after all is the test of poetry: let critics lay down what rules they please, he will always be the good poet, whose poetry men feel.

lowed by an a priori Autobiography. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1849.

REMARKS ON THE SCIENCE OF HISTORY; fol

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When we state that this volume is dedicated to "Citoyen Pierre Leroux, Republican and Philosopher," and that the materials requisite for the construction of the "Remarks" and "Autobiography" are avowedly gathered from the works of Jacob Boehme, Fabre d' Olivet, and P. J. B. Buchez," the first President of the present French National Assembly, our readers will conclude that we did not sit down to its perusal with any great prejudice in its favor. Nor did we find that this feeling was altogether removed by a closer acquaintance with the work. But we did find, what we hardly expected, a few very striking remarks, and some small insight into the principles of that modern French philosophy, which is the basis of the new social and political views which are now so actively promulgated. Those of our readers who may be, as to our shame we confess ourselves, rather in the dark upon the subject, may find that this little volume is able in some degree to enlighten their ignorance.

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FUSS IN A BOOK-CLUB,

AS RELATED BY A COPY OF MISS MARTINEAU'S "EASTERN LIFE," ETC. ETC.

Can I ever forget the bright summer evening which saw me released from the last consummating bookbinder's squeeze? Can I ever forget the satisfaction it was to feel my nice purple coat, my gold-lettered back, enveloped in stout cartridge-paper, and to find myself travelling swiftly per rail to a Surrey rectory, far from that horrible workshop, redolent of the complicated odors of stale paste, fresh glue, and the exudation of warm, young mechanics, to whom baths and wash-houses were as yet but châteaux en Espagne?

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round table in the tidiest of drawing rooms, among the prettiest of girls. My entrance caused excitement.

"No pictures!" exclaimed one pair of rosy lips; and I felt as guilty as a man might, if detected in wanting a shirt.

Oh, too learned !" lisped another. "How could you bespeak anything so dull, Annie?" I would have given the world to have opened at that part where I treat of jumps up a pyramid.

"It's just what I like," said the eldest, taking me from the other's hand." Papa told me I might choose a book this time, and I am sure I have done well;" and, armed with a paper-cutter, she forthwith began carbonadoing among my hot-press. It is charming to rest on the knees of a beautiful girl, who, reclining Oh ye on a low chair, with ringlets drooping over one, reads, with no sour criticism ruffling the softness of the mild blue eye, determined to be pleased. The desire of knowledge was in that fair girl, and she imbibed my words as greedily as my pages had the printing-ink. I question whether I made so indelible an impression; but I was read, cela me suffit. A few days after my arrival, and when I was precisely in the position above described," Mr. Murray" was announced. He was down in my list as the "Hon. and Rev. John Murray.” I learned afterwards that he was curate of Knighton, the rector-secretary having given him a title of orders; his good looks and frank manners, with the expectation of the best living in the archdeaconry of Surrey, giving him a title to everything else.

From the moment that my originator, Mother, Venus genitrix, Cybele, Magna Mater, -what shall I style her?-first called me from nothingness, to that when, fairly launched at Knighton Rectory, I felt the satisfaction of being a completed thing, my days have been passed in unvarying disquietudes. volumes! who are called into existence by fine ladies in easy chairs, with enamel pen-holders and Dresden inkstands, can ye ever imagine the dread reverse of being brought into this world under the alternating inflictions of burning suns and raging toothache, vermin-stocked Nile boats and jolting camels, foot-sores and rough-dried chemises, tiresome company and getting up fine linen, romping harem girls and bullying sheiks? I shudder at the retrospect. And then the copying, the revising, the amplifying at home, was almost as painful. The haste, the excitement, the counting, not the cost, but the gain; the consulting learned books, the cribbing from the obscure, honestly quoting from the well-known! Then the bargaining with Moxon; then those horrid proof sheets, with one's best tropes marred by full stops for commas, c's for e's, and all those eccentricities which compositors indulge in, who study between whiles the People's Charter! Ah, kittens! ah, puppies! ye who come plump into life in baskets lined with straw, and your restaurants close at hand, little do ye dream of the anguish of thus getting, bit by bit, into existence. On arriving at the rectory, I found, by the assemblage of newly-born and well-dressed brethren, and some passing words of those who looked us over-that I formed a component part of the Knighton Book-Club; the secretary of which affixing a list of names and dates to the first fly-leaf of us all, sent us on our travels. My destination was to the snuggest parsonage in Christendom; and I found myself lodged on a crimson-covered

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"So you have got Miss Martineau!" he said, taking me from the table. "Do you like it?" "Extremely," said Annie Arden. "I am quite proud of my bespeak."

"And we all quarrel with her on the subject," said a rosy girl, hard at work in a corner. "We all wanted Sadness and Gladness."

With the clairvoyance, I suppose, inherited from my Magna Mater's dabbling in mesmerism, I saw Mr. Murray's heart beat with affection for the young girl so sedulously stitching at the binding of one of her little sister's old shoes, while Annie's literary fervor failed to move him. Yet he replied not to the sempstress, except with that look which she at once sought and avoided, while he said to Annie,—

"I am not surprised at your liking the book.

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