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    LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, &c.

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    QUICKSANDS . Quicksands : a Tale . By Anna Lisle . Groombridge and Sons . Ox dipping into this volume we thought we had taken up an Americau story , for now and then we get some rather ^ original specimens of morals and manners from the land of Brother Jonathan , but , after wading forwards , we mended our guess , and made up our mind that the story is really from a strong-minded English authoress . Hereditary insanity , coupled with intoxication , is the subject chosen for illustration . Helen Grey , a beatitiful but somewhat silly young lady , plights her troth to John Howard , a very excellent young fellow , and soon afterwards is introduced to Arthur Huntingdon , a so-so sort of Lothario , with a positive

    predilection towards intoxicating beverages and incipient insanity , carefully kept out of sight , to whom she transfers her affections , and ultimately her hand-After some strange adventures , Helen becomes aware that a fatal secret hangs over her marriage , which has been brought about by the artful and heartless contrivance of her husband ' s mother and her own mother . At first , she surmises that her husband is given to drink . This turns out to be true ; but a mysterious Mr . Brooks , who hus just escaped assassination at the hands of Arthur lluntingdon , breaks the real truth to her . Retribution , follows . Her husband ' s mother dies , after waking a clean breast , duly penitent ; her husband dies a raving maniac in a madhouse ; ami her mother marries a'hard-hearted miser , who , for her proper

    punishment , gives her something more 1 nan a Roland for an Oliver . These personages being all got out of the way , Helen and John Howard approximate , renew old laves , and join hands for life . Wo have a word of advice to the lady authoress —> it is , not to bo so lavish of pious appeals and Biblo and Prayer-book interpellations . Some of the characters moralise quite as well as country parsons would do , and appeals to Heaven and the hand of God are sprinkled through the volume as plentifully as blackberries . Such solemn matters are out of place in ephemeral productions—they savour , to our mind , 01 irreverence .

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    THE POETICAL WORKS OF IUCIIA 1 U ) FUKN 1 SSS . The , Poetical Works of Hi chard Fumes * . Will ) n SJcofcIi of his Lite , by Dr . Hollaiul , M . A . PnrtrMfa'o « nd Co . RiciiAiin I ' uunkss , n innn in the humbler wnlfc . s oi industriul life , luul much of tlmf . a tuff i" him wliioh goes towards tlio composition of a true pool . Ho has been likened to Burns , but , wo tJiiiik , without much judgment . Burns was scl / -p < hicatui I— ii . o was Nature ' s poet—ho did not model jmiiacli on past excellences , ho locked to Nature alone lor icW and gavovoico to Jiia focJlugs with a rough strength nucl

    Literature, Science, Art, &C.

    LITERATURE , SCIENCE , ART , &c .

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    the back of a wliite pillioued steer , and through the forest they go home . Like a picture it seemed of the primitive , pastoral ages , Fresh -with the youth of the world , and recalling Rebecca and Isaac , Old , and yet ever new , and simple and beautiful always , Love immortal , and young in the endless succession of lovers . So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession . The poem maintains , without enhancing ' , the writer ' s fame . There is the old objective simplicity , very refreshing in our days of spasmodic lashings of the soul . " The metre is well managed .

    We do not learn that English is as capable as Greek or German of hexameter verse , but at least that Longfellow has fully made use of what capability there is . The poem has not the clear , Scotch reellike ring of Hiawatha , nor do we find the rich , closely painted , summer-day descriptions of " Evangelinc , " but there is a closer approach to a humorous clear-sceingness , and deeper insight into intricacies of character , than we remember to have struck us in any of his former poems . The book is one which grown men will read through at a sitting , and to its metre we have proved that little children will-nod their heads and beat their feet if you . but rhythmically read it to them .

    THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH . The Courtship of Miles Standish , and Other Poevis . By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Kent and Co . Another volume of American poems , long expected , often heralded , and by the poet of America most popular , at all events on this side of the sea , across which the " other poems , " grouped together by their writer under the title of Birds of Passage , have flown . Whittier , Bryant , Poe , and Longfellow stand very high upon the steps which lead to the vestibule of the Temple of Genius . And on each lower tier you can set a fair quatrain or so of

    American songsters . And yet we confess we look to America , with an . expectation only whetted , and far from being allayed , for grander poetry and richer song than she has yet given to the world . We regard tine book , then , only as one more preliminary and tentative soaring in an ether in which we believe longer and higher ilights will yet be sustained . We must commend the book as simple , popular , hearty , and eminently healthy , but only in this guarded sense , only as one more stone in the foundation of a coming fabric , only as one more blossom , one more earnest of the fruit of the future . '

    Why entertain , some may ask , so high and exigent an expectation of American poetry ? Why expect great poetry from a middle-aged people , leaving their paternal seats just at the epoch in national history , when the poetry of' heart was dying out and the poetry of head was building itself up , and soon developing amid themselves in their new territory that active industrial strife which is thought by the short-seeing itself to kill the seeds of poetry and make its growth impossible ? This oft-put dogma is easier answered by reference to an undeniable fact than by any tedious counter-argument . England , the mother stock , has been pursuing the same

    course industrially , and a very similar course politically , as America , all through the last two Hundred years , since the Mayflower sailed across the seas . If poetry , and great poetry , has in these latter days proved itself practicable here , there is no reason why it should not , amid no greater obstacles , prove itself practicable there . Nay , more , there is in America more food for poetic expression than we possess . She has all-that"we have , and more . The grand parts of English national history are hers as well as ours . The Elizabethan Westward Ho ! days are our historic property , but hers too . And does she not still bear in her visage the proofs of

    Miles Standish , a Puritan soldier , capain of he band which had arrived the year before in the Mayflower , " clad in doublet and hose , and boots of Cordovan leather , " strides through his room , while his secretary ( another Milton to a Cromwell ) , the gentle John " Al den , sits and writes . Hose Standish , the hero ' s wife , lies buried " Yonder there , on the hill by the sea . " The captain walks , and meditates , and reads , whilst John Alden is—Busily writing epistles important , to go by the Mayflower , Keady to sail on the morrow , or pext day at latest , God ¦ willing ! Homeward bound , with the tidings of all that terrible

    winter , Letters written by Alden , and full of the name of Priscilla , Full of the name and the fame of the Puritan maiden Priscilla . . John Alden loves Priscilla . To his dismay Miles Standish breaks his long silence by asking his friend to woo Priscilla for him . He cannot woo her himself , for he says : — I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender , But march up to a woman with such a proposal , I dare not . . I ' m not afraid of bullets , nor shot from the mouth of a cannon ,

    But of a thundering "No ! " point-blank from the mouth of a woman , That I confess I ' m afraid of , nor am I ashamed to . " confess it ! There is in John Aid en ' s breast a hard and sore struggle . But Friendship prevailed over love , and Alden went on his errand .

    t t nbekburn : and the Caudine Forks and the Syracusan Lines evoked a deeper poetry than Marathon or Lake Rcgillus . America has been seeking of late the elements of poetry in her own land and history . This is the only safe beginning . And in the book before us , Longfellow , who has sung of Spain , and Italy , and the Alps , tells an old story of the Puritan days , clothing with his story what is as deep and as old as humanity , very common , therefore very great and poetical .

    Through the Plymouth woods he walks , his heart still unsubdued itself , lint restrained by his honourable will . He reached his goal , and Heard , as he drew near the door , the musical voice of Priscilla Singing the hundredth psalm , the grand old Puritan anthem , Music that Luther sang to the sacred words of the Psalmist , Full of the breath of the Lord , consoling and

    comfortdescent from Pym and Cromwell's Puritans as much as ourselves ? And from the point at which the stream was divided , from the time when she began to have an independent national history of her own , her deeds have been as enkindling as ours . The battle of Bunker ' s Hill ought as naturally to have enkindled poetry as the battle of Trafalgar—nay , more , for the fight at Bunker ' s Hill was more really and truly pro ctris et focls . And yet she has only got Yankee Doodle for a national pcean to sot against what Campbell and Dibdin have given to us . It was not then the spirit of poesy dropping from the clouds to her that was wanting , but the open chalices capacious enough to catch the inspiring draught . We have around us English lanes , and meads , and hedge-rows , and country churches ; Kentish well-shaded vales and landscapes watered by Severn and Avon . America has in lier national

    ing many . Then , as ho opened the door , ho beheld the form of the maiden Seated beside her wheel , and the carded wool like a snowdrift Piled at her knee , her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle , While with her foot on the trendlo she guided the wheel in its motion . Who docs not imagine tho result of the mission ? A gentle , young man sent to iui orphan maiden to plead a rough soldier ' s suit ! Long docs John Alden most fairly , almost ardently , plead his friend ' s

    heart the memory and imprint of all these , but she has , besides , tho silent majesty of her primeval forests , cathedrals of : pillars to the sky , the sullen roar of otornal Niagara—an cvcr-repcatcd cpio itself—and the boundless infinity of prairies congenial to tho oremitism of all high genius . Perhaps tho full amount of poetry inherent in the Transatlantic soil and soul will never bo evoked till tho nation passos througha cruciblo of tribulation . The man upon whom the cloudless sun lias over shone , novcr learns tho innermost depths of his own nature , and a probation of sorrow is necessary to great hcartodncss . So is it with nations . The disconsolate maiden of Ettriok Forest , singing of hep lover slain at . Eloddqn , on tho day * When tlio" fiowors o' tho forest wore all wod away ,

    cause . Hut a 9 ho warmed and glowed , in liis simple and eloquent language , Quito forgetful of self , and full of tho prni » o of his rival , Archly tho mnldon smiled , ami , with cyos overrunning with laughtor , Said , in a tremulous voice , " Why don't you spouk for yourself , John ?" This carries us only to the end of tho third part

    of the poem . Any vital interest or real p lot ends hore 5 and what attaches to the remainder is derived from the anger of Miles Sliuirtisli , gradually softening into pacification and full reconciliation ; the modest shame of Priscilla , after the utterance of what sho l'cols to have been a somewhat unnuudcnly confession , and the rono \ veil , and over-rencwed , solioituile of John Alden as to whether love or friendship lights for him tho right path . At last all clouds arc olearod away ; they arc married in the church ; the brido is lifted by her husband to

    sang more deeply and richly poetical words than even those which Burns sot to tho tune which tho pibroohs played when tho Scots marched to Ban-

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    No . 449 , October 30 , 1858 1 THE Ii E A P E R . 1157

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 30, 1858, page 1157, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2266/page/13/