or ele that he Linwell, in so carefully observing them is wasting b forse on woesntial particulars. It is quite certain that the ar perfect the harmony between the nature and creamscanoes of a perso is ral Ze-and it should be the same in fiction, — the less do the thick, or do others in social intercourse with them think, of the mere cirmumstances considered in themselves. The study of the use of detail in romance writing is far too t par-ned by our novelists. The readers of Miss Edgeworth's Hels are sure of the aristocratic elegance of the life at Clarendon Park, ni yet the assurance comes from what may be called internal evidesa alone; there are very few details given concerning it in the book. I is perhaps more difficult to trust to the reader's assuming that the ladies and gentlemen of an American story have homes and habits befitting ladies and gentlemen, but the difficulty vanishes the moment there can be no doubt felt that they are ladies and gentlemen. But Herman is not a book to be judged by its short-comings in literary art. It is a book that no one can read without feeling a sense of merit in it beyond the range of art, and without recognizing the possession by its writer of qualities which deserve and receive the homage of the most genuine respect. 19. The Works of the Right Honorable EDMUND BURKE. Revised Edition. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1866. Vols. IV and V. pp. 482 and 508. what are called the as he reads on. Ir is very well known to all persons enterprising enough to read now and then in those volumes whose presence is essential to the respectability of all high-caste libraries, that the standard editions of British Classics" are full of blunders. Whoever buys such standard editions must expect to be his own editor, and to see the broad phylacteries of margin in which he took delight disfigured with pencil-marks that grow more indignantly emphatic and reckless That scrupulous accuracy which once made the fame of printers has almost gone out of fashion, the world over, and the deceitful shows of broad margin, disagreeably tinted paper, and handprinting have taken the place of the one solid merit that above all others should distinguish a book,-its correctness. What is worse, the blunders multiply with the editions till, in some cases, even if we get sense at all, we cannot be sure of its being the sense of the author. Here, for example, is a stanza from the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden, which, in three different editions we happen to have at hand, stands thus. (He is speaking of France.) some "That eunuch guardian of rich Holland's trade, This striking sentiment is reverently accepted and conscientiously transmitted by editor after editor. There should be, of course, a comma after “enjoy," instead of a semicolon, and the next verse should read "whose noiseful valor dares." The correction in this instance is, to be sure, an easy one, but what right has an editor to rely on his reader to make it? The margin of our so-called "Aldine" edition of Dryden is literally peppered with corrections either of phrase or of punctuation that makes one of the clearest of writers guilty of downright nonsense or blank no-meaning. Even comparatively recent authors, like Burns, have had many errors foisted upon them by ignorant or careless proof-reading, and this, too, without the poor excuse of revenge which Erasmus's printer had for so abominably misprinting one of his dedications. It is accordingly with feelings very far from satisfaction that we commonly read the announcement of forthcoming "Library Editions" of favorite authors. For it seems now to be a general theory with publishers, that the use of such books is to be sold, and not to be read, that they are no longer intended to supply the mind, but only the "library," with furniture. Of all authors Burke has perhaps suffered the most by the careful dereliction of his editors. That his works, many of them unrevised by himself, some of them dictated to amanuenses, and some made up from reporters' notes, should be more than usually liable to inaccuracy, was to have been expected. Greater editorial care was also to have been expected for this very reason. But his editors, however highly they may have valued his writings and their influence, would seem never to have thought it worth while to trouble themselves with reading what it was so much easier to admire. Of his literary executors one died soon after himself; another, long before his work was completed, became stone-blind; and the third, content with the unlaborious distinction which a coronet confers, seems to have satisfied his editorial conscience by deciding how much of Burke's correspondence should not be given to a plebeian public. To those who know Mr. Nichols, whose modesty, forbidding the appearance of his name on the title-page, we may perhaps offend by speaking of him here, it need not be said that this edition has every advantage which critical acumen, labor of research, and an almost fanatical exactness can give it. To those who do not know him, the amount of toil which he has devoted to these volumes, rewarded only by his own sense of having fulfilled the responsibility resting upon even anonymous editorship, would appear incredible. He has collated all the editions, not including mere reprints, of his author, and his corrections, many of them essential to the understanding of passages, many to their rhetorical finish, and all of them important to whoever wishes to have Burke's own words, and not those of his printers, amount to hundreds in every volume. In the fifth volume, for example, they are more than three hundred. Nor has Mr. Nichols overstepped the just boundaries that should limit an editor's discretion. Wherever the error of fact or the slovenliness of grammar was evidently Burke's own, it has been allowed to stand as he left it. On the same principle, his quotations have not been corrected, illustrating, as they do, the abundance and readiness of his memory. We give a few examples, selecting rather the shortest than the most important. These few examples, selected from so many, will serve to show the amount and kind of labor that have been bestowed on these volumes, and to convince those who own any of the "standard" editions of Burke, that nothing but their own ingenuity will enable them in reading it to guess at the meaning of the author. This edition possesses the capital merit of accuracy; and we feel that the publishers deserve the special thanks not only of mere readers, but of all who love truth and honesty, for having resolved first of all to make a trustworthy book, and then, what does not always follow, for having secured a competent man to see that it shall be what it professes to be. We cannot, indeed, call this in all respects a perfect edition of Burke. We hope yet to see one supervised by the same accurate scholar, in which the chronological order of the works shall be observed, which shall include the life and letters, an index, and those illustrative notes which Burke is already enough of an ancient to need. But, until we get such an edition, it is a great deal to have one on which we can depend, and the editor deserves the thanks of all admirers of Burke for having done for his author all that he undertook, and more than any one else we can think of would have been competent to do. 20. Harper's Weekly, a Journal of Civilization. Year 1865. New York: Harper and Brothers. Vol. IX. For the Folio. pp. 832. In a notice prefixed to this volume the publishers state that "the circulation of the Weekly has steadily increased from the first. The average circulation for the past year has been largely over one hundred thousand copies per week. On some occasions over two hundred thousand copies have been sold of a single issue." This immense circulation is not surprising. The last year was the most eventful in American history; and the events were of a sort not only to touch the deepest feelings, but to awaken the liveliest curiosity of the public. Truthful illustrations of them were of interest to the whole community. In the lines around Petersburg and Richmond, and on the march of Sherman, the artists in the service of the paper made their pictorial re ports of scenes and incidents, concerning which every one was eager to learn the exact truth. Their pictures represented to the eyes of men and women and children the persons, the places, the actions which were filling their thoughts and exciting their hearts; and in the pages of the paper not devoted to pictorial illustration they found an admirable comment on the political conditions of the times, in a series of articles distinguished, as in former recent years, by clearness and moderation of statement, steady reference to principle, and the most thorough devotion to the great cause of the country and of humanity. The weekly numbers of the paper now bound into a volume form one of the most interesting and valuable records of a year, the events of which will hardly be of less concern to our remotest posterity than they have been to us. The vast circulation of the paper imposes upon the proprietors the duty of making it in every respect worthy of its high pretensions as a Journal of Civilization. There is room for improvement in various respects. Some of the illustrations are not only poor in execution, but poor in conception, and incorrect. There was, to take a striking instance, hardly a single good illustration of any of the scenes and incidents connected with the death of Mr. Lincoln, though this was in part made up for by the very striking allegorical design, by Mr. Nast, of America weeping over his coffin. Again, the caricatures are almost invariably wretched in design, except when borrowed from Punch, and are frequently vulgar in intention; if they cannot be abolished, they ought to be improved. And finally, there is a certain class of advertisements to be found on the last pages of each number, which the publishers of such a paper ought to feel themselves required by every consideration of public morality to exclude. We rely upon Messrs. Harper and Brothers to do justice to the public in these respects, and to make their profitable paper really representative of the civilization of America. 21.- A History of New England, from the Discovery by Europeans to the Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, being an Abridgment of his "History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty." By JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. xx., 408, and 386. DR. PALFREY has done wisely in preparing this abridgment of his larger work. Of the value of that work our readers are already well informed. No higher praise can be given to it than that which it justly deserves, of being a worthy history of New England. It is not probable |