It is not, indeed, that perfection of translation where the very form of the original is reproduced, nor that kind where, as in Coleridge and Longfellow, the translation is finer than the original. Still, it is well done. The meaning is clearly rendered, and in good English. We are not charmed by the style, but we are not repelled. We hope that our German friends will continue to give us such books.

III-THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA: A popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. Edited by GEORGE RIPLEY and CHARLES A. DANA. Volume VI. New York: Appleton & Co. Philadelphia: J. McFarlan, Agent. 1859. pp. 772.

The Cyclopædia is proving itself, in the main, excellent. There are some sixty contributors to this volume, which extends from Cough to Education. We give some of the Authors, with the subjects. For example: H. C. Baird furnishes the Dallases and Mr. Duponceau; Erastus Brooks furnishes Judge Cranch: the editor of the Washington Constitution, Lord Derby and B. D'Israeli; Dr. Tryon Edwards, President Day and the Dwights; Edward Everett, Thomas Dowse; Professor Felton, Demosthenes; Mr. Hildreth, Creole, Dumont; Mr. Hillard, Charles Dickens; Professor Lowell, Dante, &c., &c.

It will be seen that the principle is to entrust an article to some one interested in the special topic. If this produce eulogistic articles, they are the more earnest and interesting. This cyclopædia is the place to turn for information on almost any topic. Its success is becoming more and more decided.

IV.-MOSAICS. By the Author of "Salad for the Solitary," &c. New York: Charles Scribner. 1859. pp. 420.

"Salad for the Solitary" and "Salad for the Social" have gained for the author a high reputation. "Mosaics" is, like them, a congeries of extracts on such topics as "Author-craft," "Youth and Age," "The Witchery of Wit," &c., interspersed with remarks of the author. To give a brick of the house, we quote from p. 269, seq.:

"The Deserted Village" had for its locale, the hamlet of Lissoy, County Westmeath, Ireland. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. A dame called Walsey Cruse, kept the ale-house.

Sir Joshua Reynolds says: "Calling upon Goldsmith one day, I found him in the double occupation of turning a couplet and teaching a pet dog to stand upon his haunches. The last lines in the page were still wet-they form a part of the description of Italy

"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled;

The sports of children satisfy the child.'

Goldy joined in the laugh, and acknowledged that his hoyish sport with the dog, suggested the stanza."

Campbell writes to a relation in America in relation to Hohenlinden:

"Never shall time efface from my memory, the recollections of that hour of astonishment and suspended breath, when I stood with the good monks of St. Jacob, to overlook a charge of Klonau's cavalry upon the French, under Grennier, emcamped below us. We saw the fire given and returned, and heard, distinctly, the sound of the French pas de charge. A park of artillery was opened just beneath the walls of the monastery. My love of novelty now gave way to personal fear; and I took a carriage back to Landshut."

There is no very extraordinary extent of reading shown in this volume, but it is a good summer book, with pleasant thoughts in it from various quarters.

V.-POEMS. By ANNE WHITNEY. New York: Appleton & Co. 1859. pp.

191.

No word of preface. No intimation beyond "Anne Whitney." Is, then, the critic to say calmly and quietly just what he thinks? It is this, then. There is not much poetry here, just now; but there is extraordinary capability. Young, enthusiastic readers, full of vague aspirations, undeveloped philosophies and pulsations of the universe, will see here more poetry in performance than grave old gentlemen like ourselves. But poetry is thought melodiously uttered, and therefore, the best we can say of this volume is, that there is great potentiality in it-power to do, but not much done.

Nobody but a poetess in posse could have written this sonnet, and yet it is not poetry, and not one person in a hundred can make any sense out of it. It is one of "Five Sonnets relating to Beauty."

I dreamed an angel, Angel twice, through death,
Wrought us another "Night." A stately dream,
Where reconciling Infinites did seem

To fold round life's perplexities, and wreath
Its ancient glooms with stars :-a marble breath
From Art's serene, fresh, everlasting morn,
Where the dull worm of earthly pain is born

To winged life henceforth, and busieth

With golden messages its mortal hours.

O, the Divine, earth would have wronged and slain!
Its pangs are rays above her falling towers
Of lovelier truth-breaths of a sweet disdain
Shedding strange nothingness on meaner pain,
Drops of the bleeding god that turn to flowers.

This is like the parts of Shelley and Mrs. Browning that their admirers have given up as too hard. It is making poetry a severer study than mathematics. It is like the new chess-school, who make their play harder than work itself.

Poetry is one of the fine arts; not a machine more intricate than any in the patent office. We know that nobody ever understood the Christabel, and when a poetess has written things equal to the Ancient Mariner, Genevieve, Chamouni and Kubla Khan, she may write something as unintelligible as Christabel-provided it be as beautiful.

It is very remarkable that, as society becomes flatter and flatter, poetry becomes more and more mystical, weird, self-involved, subjective and intense. Greek poetry, in its surpassing beauty-growing out of an æsthetic society-is easily intelligible to those who can read the original; and that of the age of Shakspeare and Elizabeth, is not only as bright as the sunbeams, but as clear. was not until the invention of steam engines and the cotton gin, until society was flattened out into so dead a level that passenger railways, carrying every body that can pay five cents, can go freely over it, a society from which all thought is scrupulously banished, that poets took to the high ideal. Truly, extremes meet, reactions are inevitable, and moral laws, no less than physical, will have their way.

We give, in justice to the fair authoress, a sonnet from which the thought can be extracted, as a Pennsylvania boy gets out chestnuts -by squeezing open the burrs, to the risk of his tender fingers. The chestnuts, as the reader will see, are worth the trouble:

CONTINENCE.

I pledge you in a cup not overbrimming,

Though heirs to all, God knows our weak hearts best,

And tempts us gently from our downy nest,

To the wide air. Yon fresh horizon dimming,

And tempering to our thought, the abysses, gleaming
Beyond; eternity's severe, pure light

Soft prismed by time; and love, the infinite,
Through human founts intelligibly streaming,
Teach us that heaven withholdeth but to fill:

Grasping thou would'st lose all. Wait then and see,
In the old press of duty steadfast still,

How comes the unexpected god to thee;
How the wild Future, that now mocks thy clasp,

Lies trembling in the Present's nervous grasp.

As we presume that the authoress is young, we will venture to advise, first, that her thoughts be brought out clearly and distinctly,

and, next, a careful study of Gray and Longfellow for melody and careful choosing of the best words.

The Hymn to the Sea shows much power, though it is too palpably like Shelley, as to the manner. The vague yet intense thought is the authoress' own.

VI.-A COMPENDIUM OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, Chronologically arranged; with Biographical Sketches of the Authors, and Selections from their Works. By CHARLES D. CLEVELAND. Philadelphia: E. C. & J. Biddle. 1859. pp. 784.

This edition of Professor Cleveland's work is a great improvement upon the first. The characteristic defects are still visible, but in a mitigated degree, and we hope for a third edition in which they will be still further removed. They are, that while the book professes to be a compendium of American literature, it is quite too sectional, and while professing to contain literature, it is too vehemently partisan. If it were announced as a "Compend of New England literature, having special Anti-Slavery and Congregational tendencies, with occasional notices of other American Authors," all would be well, and we should know just what to expect; as it is, we feel that the Professor is keyed up too high on one subject for an impartial editor, and that he cannot free himself from the fixed belief that Boston is "the hub of the universe."

Our readers will not misunderstand us. Professor Cleveland has an entire right to his opinions on the subject of slavery. We sympathize with them to a certain extent, but whether they should be thrust prominently forward in a Compend of Literature, is the question. And so in regard to his passion for New England.

There are, for example, no extracts from Henry Clay, or Legaré, or Judge Berrien, or Mr. Crittenden, or Mr. Bell, or Patrick Henry, or John Sergeant, or Nicholas Biddle, among politicians. There are no extracts from Samuel Davies, or Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith, or Dr. Griffin, or Dr. Blackburn, or Dr. Wilson, or Olin, or Bascom, or Williams, or Bedell, or Nelson, or Bruen, or Larned, or Dod. Were not some of these ministers as able, or as eloquent, as Dr. Andrews Norton, or Henry Ware, Jr., or Leonard Bacon, or Dr. Cheever, or Andrew P. Peabody? We are aware that Mr. Cleveland is more familiar with New England than with the other small remainder of the United States, but literature should be broad, comprehensive, unsectional. Then why take so much pains, in such a book, to praise the "Independent" newspaper as "admirable?" &c., &c.

These allowances made, we can honestly commend the work as

containing much at which we have reason to exult as Americans. It is a noble tribute to the national genius and culture. Nor must the reader suppose that men from the Middle States, or Western or Southern men are excluded, for this is by no means the case. Forty-six authors, born in the Middle States, are introduced, and seventeen born in the Southern States, and the selection includes a very large proportion of those who, by general consent, would be considered our best writers. The extracts, too, are made with taste, and care is taken that the estimates in regard to genius and learning shall be correct. On the whole, we regret that where there is so much to commend, we find it necessary to put in any caveat.

VII.-ELEMENTS OF RHETORIC; designed as a Manual of Instruction. By HENRY COPPEE, A. M., Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania, &c. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co. 1859. pp. 367. The excellence of this treatise, as a text-book, consists in its clearness and comprehensiveness. Professor Coppée makes himself understood, and he gathers into his work all that relates to the subject. These are great merits. "Holding, with Dr. Campbell, that Rhetoric is allied to Logic in the sense as well as to Grammar in the expression, the author has attempted to give a clear exposition of the art of constructing discourse."

This is not a philosophic treatise on Rhetoric; nor must the general reader look for new matter in it. It is a text-book for students, digesting in a lucid manner all the mass of known and hitherto elaborated particulars which enter practically into the subject.

VIII.—CHURCH PSALMIST; or, Psalms and Hymns, designed for the Public, Social and Private use of Evangelical Christians. Containing, also, directions for Musical Expression. With Supplement. Fifty-third Edition. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee. pp. 723.

This is the Book of Psalms and Hymns of the General Assembly, with the Supplement ordered to be prepared by the Publication Committee. It gives us no common degree of pleasure to be able to write these words. The mere fact that it is the Assembly's book, that we may now have a uniform psalmody, ought to go very far towards introducing this book into every one of our churches, and the fact that the purchase of it goes to support our Publication Committee, is another strong reason.

But independently of this, we think very highly of the book itself. It was prepared with very great care, and with special reference to its lyrical character. Much time was spent over the Supplement,