Chapter XXIX: The Squire's Speech (4)

J.S. Redfield has issued a work on _The Restoration of the Jews_, by SETH LEWIS, in which the author maintains the doctrine of a literal return of the Jews to Palestine, and the second coming of Christ in connection with that event. Mr. Lewis, whose death took place one or two years since, at an advanced old age, was one of the District Judges of the State of Louisiana, and highly respected for his learning and ability, as well as his exemplary private character. He was devoted to the study of the Scriptures, and presents the fruits of his research with modesty and earnestness, though hardly in a manner adapted to produce a general conviction of the correctness of his views.

The same publisher has issued _A Practical System of Modern Geography_, by JOHN F. ANDERSON, a successful teacher of one of the Public Schools in this city. The leading features of this little work are brevity, clearness, and simplicity. The author has aimed to present a practical system of Geography, unconnected with subjects not pertaining to the science, in a manner adapted to facilitate the rapid progress of the pupil. We think that he has met with great success in the accomplishment of his plan.

Tallis, Willoughby, and Co. continue the serial publication of _The Life of Christ_, by JOHN FLEETWOOD, which beautiful work is now brought down to the Twelfth Number. It is embellished with exquisite engravings, and in all respects is worthy of a place in every family.

The same house are bringing out _Scripture Illustrations for the Young_, by FREDERICK BAMBRIDGE, in a style of peculiar beauty--a work every way adapted to charm the taste and inform the mind of the juvenile reader.

_The Dove and the Eagle_ (published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston) is a slight satirical poem, with some clever hits at transcendentalism, socialism, teetotalism, woman's-rights-ism, and other rampant hobbies of the day.

Among the latest republications of Robert Carter and Brothers, we find a neat edition of _Young's Night Thoughts_, printed on excellent white paper, in a convenient, portable form; _The Principles of Geology Explained_, by Rev. DAVID KING, showing the relations of that science to natural and revealed religion; _The Listener_, by CAROLINE FRY; the able and elaborate work on _The Method of the Divine Government_, by JAMES M'COSH; and _Daily Bible Illustrations_, by JOHN KITTO, in three volumes. This last work has gained an extensive popularity in England, and has the rare merit of presenting the scenes of Sacred History in a vivid and picturesque light, with a rare freedom from bombast on the one hand, and from weak common-place on the other.

The Carters have recently published a new edition of Mrs. L.H. SIGOURNEY's popular contribution to the cause of Temperance, entitled _Water Drops_, consisting of an original collection of stories, essays, and short poems, illustrative of the benefits of total abstinence. The Eighth Edition of Dr. G.B. CHEEVER's _Lectures on the Pilgrim's Progress_, is also just issued by the same house.

_The History of the United States_, by RICHARD HILDRETH, Vol. IV. (published by Harper and Brothers), commences a new series of his great historical work, embracing the period subsequent to the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789, and reaching to the close of Mr. Monroe's first Presidential term in 1821. The volume now issued is devoted to the administration of Washington, and gives a condensed and intelligible view of the early development of American legislation, of the gradual formation of the parties which have since borne the most conspicuous part in our national politics, and of the character and influence of the statesmen who presided over the first operations of the Federal Government.

With a greater vivacity of style than is shown in the preceding volumes, the present exhibits the results of no less extensive research, and a more profound spirit of reflection. Mr. Hildreth evidently aims at a rigid impartiality in his narrative of political events, although he never affects an indifference toward the pretensions of conflicting parties. His sympathies are strongly on the side of Washington, Hamilton, and Jay, with regard to the questions that soon embarrassed the first administration. While he presents a lucid statement of the principles at issue, he takes no pains to conceal his own predilections, always avoiding, however, the tone of a heated partisan. This portion of his work, accordingly, is more open to criticism, than his account of the earlier epochs of American history. The political devotee may be shocked at the uncompromising treatment of some of his favorites, while he can not fail to admit the ability which is evinced in the estimate of their characters.

Among the topics which occupy an important place in this volume, are the Inauguration of the Federal Government, the establishment of the Revenue System, the Financial Policy of Hamilton, the Growth of Party Divisions, the Insurrection in Pennsylvania, Mr. Jay's Treaty with England, and Mr. Monroe's Mission to France. These are handled with great fullness and clearness of detail, with a sound and discriminating judgment, and in a style which, though seldom graphic and never impassioned, has the genuine historical merits of precision, energy, and point. We rejoice to welcome this series as an admirable introduction to the political history of our Republic, and shall look for its completion with impatience.

LOSSING's _Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution_ (published by Harper and Brothers) has now reached the close of the First Volume. Its interest has continued without diminution through the successive Numbers. The liveliness of the narrative, as well as the beauty of the embellishments, has given this work a wide popularity, which we have no doubt it will fully sustain by the character of the subsequent volumes. The union of history, biographical incidents, and personal anecdotes is one of its most attractive features, and in the varied intercourse of Mr. Lossing with the survivors of the Revolutionary struggle, and the descendants of those who have deceased, he has collected an almost exhaustless store of material for this purpose, which he has shown himself able to work up with admirable effect.

_The United States: Its Power and Progress_ (published by Lippincott, Grambo, and Co.) is a translation by EDMUND L. DU BARRY of the Third Paris edition of a work by M. POUSSIN, late Minister of France to the United States. It presents a systematic historical view of the early colonization of the country, with an elaborate description of the means of national defense, and of agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and education in the United States. M. Poussin had some excellent qualifications for the performance of this task. Residing in this country for many years, he was able to speak from experience of the practical working of republican institutions. Connected with the Board of Engineers appointed by the American Government for topographical surveys in reference to future military operations, he had attained an exact knowledge of our geographical position, and the whole organization of our internal improvements. A decided republican in feeling, his warmest sympathies were with the cause of political progress in this country. Free from the aristocratic prejudices of the Old World, the rapid development of social prosperity in the United States was a spectacle which he could not contemplate with indifference. Hence his volume is characterized not only by breadth of information, but by fairness of judgment. If he sometimes indulges a French taste for speculative theories, he is, in general, precise and accurate in his statements of facts. His description of our organization for the defense of the coast and the frontiers is quite complete, and drawn to a great degree from personal observation, may be relied on as authentic. We can freely commend this work to the European who would attain a correct view of the social condition, political arrangements, and industrial resources of the United States, as well as to our own citizens who are often so absorbed in the practical operations of our institutions as to lose sight of their history and actual development.

_Salander and the Dragon_, by FREDERIC WILLIAM SHELTON (published by George P. Putnam and Samuel Hueston), is a more than commonly successful attempt in a difficult species of composition, and one in which the disgrace of failure is too imminent to present a strong temptation to any but aspirants of the most comfortable self-complacency. Mr. Shelton, however, has little to fear from the usual perils that beset this path of literary effort. He has a genius for the vocation. With such a fair fruitage, from the first experiment, we hope he will allow no rust to gather on his implements.

Salander is a black, or rather greenish monster of a dwarf, without bones, capable of being doubled into all shapes, like a strip of India Rubber, and stretching himself out like the same. He was committed for safe-keeping to the jailer of an important fortress, called the Hartz Prison. The jailer, whose name was Goodman, held the place under the Lord of Conscienza, a noble of the purest blood, and very strict toward his vassals. After suffering no slight annoyance from the pranks of the horrid imp, the jailer applied to the lord of the castle for relief, who told him that the rascally prisoner had been imposed upon him by forged orders, but now that he had him in possession, he must guard him with the strictest vigilance, and subject him to the most severe treatment. The adventures of the jailer with the infernal monster compose the materials of the allegory, which is conducted with no small skill, and with uncommon beauty of expression. The upshot of the story is to illustrate the detestable effects of slander, a vice which the author treats with a wholesome bitterness of invective, regarding it as one of the most diabolical forms of the unpardonable sin. It could not be incarnated in a more loathsome body than that of the hideous Salander. We can only tolerate his presence on account of the exceeding beauty of the environment in which he is placed.

Geo. P. Putnam has published the Fifth Volume of COOPER's _Leather-Stocking Tales_, containing _The Prairie_, with an original Introduction and Notes by the author. In this volume we have the last scenes in the exciting career of Leather-Stocking, who has been driven from the forest by the sound of the ax, and forced to seek a desperate refuge in the bleak plains that skirt the Rocky Mountains. The new generation of readers, that have not yet become acquainted with this noble creation, have a pleasure in store that the veteran novel-reader may well envy.

_An Address_ by HENRY B. STANTON, and _Poem_ by ALFRED B. STREET pronounced before the Literary Societies of Hamilton College, are issued in a neat pamphlet by Rogers and Sherman Utica. Mr. Stanton's Address presents a comparative estimate of Ultraists, Conservatives, and Reformers, as mingled in the conflicting classes of American Society, using the terms to designate forces now in operation rather than parties and with no special reference to combinations of men which have been thus denominated. His views are brought forward with vigor and discrimination, and free from the offensive tone which discussions of this nature are apt to produce. In applying the principles of his Address to the subject of American literature, he forcibly maintains the absurdity of an abject dependence on the ancient classics. "I would not speak disparagingly of the languages of Greece and Rome. As mere inventions, pieces of mechanism, they are as perfect as human lip ever uttered, as exquisite as mortal pen ever wrote; and the study of the literature they embalm refines the taste and strengthens the mind. But while the writers of Greece and Rome are retained in our academic halls, they should not be allowed to exclude those authors whose researches have enlarged the boundaries of knowledge, and whose genius has added new beauties to the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Let Homer and Shakspeare, Virgil and Milton, Plato and Bacon, Herodotus and Macaulay, Livy and Bancroft, Xenophon and Prescott, Demosthenes and Webster, Cicero and Brougham, stand on the same shelves, and be studied by the same classes."

Mr. STREET's Poem is a polished and graceful description of the romantic scenery of the Mohawk Valley, interspersed with several striking Indian legends, comparing the tranquil happiness of the present day, with the carnage and misery of the old warfare. Mr. Street gives a pleasing picture in the following animated verses:

View the lovely valley now!
Villages strew, like jewels on a chain,
All its bright length. Whole miles of level grain,
With leagues of meadow-land and pasture-field,
Cover its surface; gray roads wind about,
O'er which the farmer's wagon clattering rolls,
And the red mail-coach. Bridges cross the streams,
Roofed, with great spider-webs of beams within.

Homesteads to homesteads flash their window-gleams,
Like friends they talk by language of the eye;
Upon its iron strips the engine shoots,
(That half-tamed savage with its boiling heart
And flaming veins, its warwhoop and its plume.
That seems to fly in sullen rage along--
Rage at its captors--and that only waits
Its time to dash its victims to quick death).
Swift as the swallow skims, that engine fleets
Through all the streaming landscape of green field
And lovely village. On their pillared lines,
Distances flash to distances their thoughts,
And all is one abode of all the joy
And happiness that civilization yields.

Harper and Brothers have republished from the English edition Lord HOLLAND's _Foreign Reminiscences_, edited by his son, Henry Edward, Lord Holland--a book which has excited great attention from the English press, and will be read with interest by the lovers of political anecdote in this country. It is filled with rapid, gossiping notices of the principal European celebrities of the past generation, and devotes a large space to personal recollections of the Emperor Napoleon. Lord Holland writes in an easy conversational style, and his agreeable memoirs bear internal marks of authenticity.

_Jane Bouverie_, by CATHERINE SINCLAIR, is a popular English novel (republished by Harper and Brothers), intended to sketch a portrait of true feminine loveliness, without an insipid formality and without any romantic impossibilities of perfection. The denouement has the rare peculiarity of not ending in marriage, the heroine remaining in the class of single ladies, designated by the author as par excellence "The Sisters of England."

_London Labor and the London Poor_, by HENRY MAYHEW (republished by Harper and Brothers), is the title of a work of the deepest interest and importance to all who wish to obtain a comprehensive view of the present condition of industry and its rewards in the metropolis of Great Britain. It consists of the series of papers formerly contributed by the author to the _Morning Chronicle_, entirely rewritten and enlarged by the addition of a great variety of facts and descriptions. The author has devoted his attention for some time past to the state of the working classes. He has collected an immense number of facts, illustrative of the subject, which are now brought to light for the first time. His evident sympathies with the poor do not blind his judgment. His statements are made after careful investigation, and show no disposition to indulge in theoretic inferences. As a vivid picture of London life, in the obscure by-ways, concerning which little is generally known, his work possesses an uncommon value. It is to be issued in successive parts, illustrated with characteristic engravings, the first of which only has yet appeared in the present edition.

Harper and Brothers have published a new English novel by the author of _Mary Barton_, entitled _The Moorland Cottage_, a pleasing domestic story of exquisite beauty.

Three Leaves From Punch.

LECTURES ON LETTERS.

We find in a recent number of that well-known and reliable newspaper, the London PUNCH, an interesting sketch of a new and improved system of teaching the elementary branches of education. It proceeds upon principles somewhat different from those which have generally obtained in the popular methods of instruction. It was prepared by the Editor of the journal referred to, for the Council of Education established a few years since by the English Government, for the express purpose of discussing and promoting improved methods of public teaching. In a note accompanying the work, the author states that, as soon as it was completed, he forwarded it, by

THE PARCELS CONVEYANCE COMPANY,

with a polite note to the Secretary of the Council.

We regret that our limits will not permit us to present to the readers of the New Monthly Magazine a full description of this novel work. We can only give a slight sketch of the manner in which it proposes to teach the Alphabet. The author thinks that, in the systems in general use hitherto, advantage has not been sufficiently taken of the pictorial form, as capable of connecting with the alphabet, not only agreeable associations, but many useful branches of knowledge.

He would begin with the letter =A=, by rendering it attractive to children as a swing, and the opportunity might then be taken of leading the conversation to the swing of the pendulum, the laws which govern its oscillations, and the experiments of Maupertius, Clairault, and Lemmonier, upon its variations in different latitudes.

=G=, the child might be told, stands for George, and the pictorial illustrations of St. George and the dragon (the latter about to swallow its own tail) would enable the teacher to enter upon a disquisition relative to the probable Eastern origin of the legendary stories of the middle ages.

=H= would naturally suggest reminiscences of modern English history. The teacher would give some account of George Fox, the first Quaker, and of the singular customs and opinions of the sect he founded. Thence the child might be led to perceive the evils of schism, and the legitimate, and mischievous consequences of that right of private judgment still claimed by a small, but happily now an uninfluential minority in the established church.

=J= might introduce some profitable remarks upon Natural History, when the difference could be explained between bipeds by nature, and quadrupeds who become bipeds only for selfish ends.

Advantage might be taken of the pictorial illustration of =K= to lay the foundation of an acquaintance both with the science of Pneumatics, and with Captain Reid's theory of the laws affecting the course of storms.

With the letter =M= the child might learn the meaning of what is termed the centre of gravity, so important to be maintained by ladies walking on stilts.

The letter =S=, reminding the teacher of _Pisces_--_fishes_--one of the signs of the Zodiac, would furnish him with a suitable opportunity for discoursing upon Astronomy. Afterward he might take up the subject of Ichthyology, and speak of the five orders, _the apodal_, _the jugular_, _the abdominal_, _the thoracic_, and _cartilaginous_ species, into which the great family of fishes is divided.

The Editor of this work gives also a general outline of the manner in which this system was received by the Council, when it was first brought to their notice. The President was so highly delighted with it, that he not only promised to give the matter still further consideration, but invited the author to bring forward certain other works for infancy, upon which, it was generally understood, he had been engaged. To this polite invitation the Editor replied that he had been able as yet to complete only two works of this description, namely, the delightful Poem,

HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY BEE,

and the equally interesting and still more tragic history of

COCK ROBIN.

He thought the teacher could not better follow out Dr. Watts's idea of "improving the shining hour," than by rendering the same lesson of industry available for a full account of the genus _apis_, taking care not to confound in the child's mind the _apis_ of entomology with _apis_ the bull, worshiped by the ancient Egyptians. With regard to the historical work referred to, it was high time that the juvenile mind should be disabused of a popular error. The facts were, that a man of the name of _Sparrow_ had robbed a farm-yard of its poultry, for which offense, after being taken and made to confess his guilt, he was transported. The crime and punishment were suggestive of many useful reflections upon the importance of honesty; but the facts were ludicrously distorted and deprived of all their moral force in the spurious account published by certain booksellers in St. Paul's Church-yard of the same transaction. A question is asked, "Who kill'd Cock Robin?" and the following answer is given:

"I says the Sparrow,
With my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin!!!"

In continuing his account of this interview, the Editor introduces the new system of musical notation, which he also brought to the notice of the Council, and which they all agreed would be found exceedingly useful in

ASSISTING A PUPIL UP THE GAMUT.

But into this branch of the subject we can not follow him. In fact, the Editor states that, at this point of his exposition, he was constrained to desist by noticing that several members of the Council had become so deeply impressed with the merits of his pictorial system, that they were illustrating it in their own persons, by throwing themselves into the form of

THE LETTER =Y=.

* * * * *

PUNCH ON SPECIAL PLEADING.