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 REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

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The Stranded Ship. By L. Clark Davis. 1 vol., 16 mo New York: G. P. Putnam & Son.-Among recent stories by American writers this is one of the best. Very many of the chapters are written with great power. The description of the storm, toward the conclusion, is strikingly fine : one hears the very boom of the surf, and feels the sting of the scud. Mr. Davis understands one cardinal point in story telling: he arrests and fixes the attention at the very REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. How Lisa Loved the King. By George Eliot. 1 vol., 16 mo. opening of the tale ; and never afterward lets it go. He is Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.- The author of “ Adam Bede," a comparatively new writer, at least to us, but he gives " Silas Warner," " Romola," and " The Mill on the Floss," is promise of a very successful future. The Villa on the Rhine. By B. Auerbach. 2 vols. New the greatest of living novelists ; but she is not a poet, in the true sense of that term, at least: she is only a wonderful York: Leypoldt & Holt.-We have now the completion of artist, working in rhyme. Hier " Spanish Gipsy" exhibited this remarkable novel. It is published in four parts, bound at once her strength and her weakness ; and this new tale in paper, or in two volumes, bound in cloth : the last being, shows that she has not improved, as, indeed, she cannot. by all odds, the best edition, at least for the library. Both Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a born poet. Yet the editions, however, are from the same text. The translation critic, in reading her works, continually says to himself, has been made, for these editions, by the author's authority, "how much better this could have been made, with a little and for every copy sold, he receives a stipulated sum. A more care !" In perusing the " Spanish Gipsy," or " How portrait of Mr. Auerbach, and a biography by Bayard Lisa Loved the King," it is the very opposite reflection that Taylor, add to the value and attractions of the volumes. the reader makes : he is astonished to find how much George The finer edition is printed on tinted paper. Eliot has done, with so little real poetical material to work The Wedding-Day in All Ages and Countries. By Edupon. And yet our author is a genius, and one of the very ward J. Wood. 1 vol., 12 mo. New York: Harper & highest rank! She has dramatic as well as narrative power, Brothers - A very curious and even instructive book. The and an insight that has not been equaled since Shakspeare. author describes the marriage customs of the earliest and Nevertheless the poetic quality, in its highest degree at most savage tribes as well as the wedding-day of modern least, has been denied to her. There is more true poetry, for civilization. Ho shows how, in some nations, the wife was example, in Coleridge's Christabel," than in both the stolen, in others bought, and in others, as with us, won by "Spanish Gipsy" and " How Lisa Loved the King." personal courtship and devoted love. It is a book in which Oldtown Folks. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1 vol., 12 mo. ladies especially will be interested. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.- This is a story of the past. The Changed Brides. By E. D. E. N. Southworth. 1 vol., We incline to think it the best of Mrs. Stowe's novels, with 12 mo. Philada: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.-This writer the exception, perhaps, of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." We say, retains her popularity in a very remarkable degree. She owes perhaps, for the sensation which the latter fiction produced this success, we think, principally to her stirring incidents. was owing, in part, to its subject, and to the intense and Her stories, though often improbable, are always alive. Her even exalted feeling existing on that subject ; and the time novels belong to the class that ordinary, uncritical minds, has hardly come, even yet, when a critic can dispassionately looking only for excitement in their reading, find it difficult say, how much of its success was due to this feeling, and to lay down. This new tale is really one of her best. how much to its merits as a mere story. But the present Elements of Astronomy. By Charles J. White, A. 21. fiction has no such adventitions interest : it must stand or 1 vol., 12 mo. Philada : Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.fall by its literary excellence alone. That excellence, as we A work designed for colleges and the higher grades of have already said, is very considerable. The pictures of the academies, very faithful and thorough, and profusely illnscomparatively primitive life of New England, at the period trated with diagrams and other engravings. All the latest of the narrative, are quite realistic, and the interest of the discoveries in anatomy are given. The chapter on meteoric story, which begins at once, is maintained to the end. bodies is particularly interesting. We are not sure but that Men, Women, and Ghosts. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.this is the best work of its kind before the public. 1 vol., 12 mo. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.- The success Ethelyn's Mistake. By Mary J. Holmes. 1 vol., 12 mo. of "The Gates Ajar," of which Miss Phelps is the author, New York: Carleton.- This is by the author of " Lena has led to the publication of these earlier and fugitive Rivers," "Tempest and Sunshine," and other popular Amearticles. It was not entirely, or even principally, the lite- rican fictions. Mrs. Holmes has her own circle of readers, rary merit of the " The Gates Ajar," that led to the large with whom she is quite a favorite. This new story will add sale of that book, but the yearning, which exists in every to her popularity. immortal soul, to pierce, if possible, the secrets of a future The Quaker Partisans. By the author of "The Scout." existence. These slight, half-didactic sketches have no such adventitious attraction. They are neither better, nor worse 1 vol., 16 mo. Philada: J. B. Lippincott & Co.- A welltold story of the war of independence. It is one of the than the average of magazine articles. Beautiful Snow, and Other Poems. By J. W. Watson. many merits of this publishing house, that everything they 1 vol., 12 mo. Philada: Turner Brothers & Co.- The prin- put forth, even a novel, is remarkably well printed. The cipal poem in this volume has long enjoyed considerable volume is illustrated. For Her Sake. By F. W. Robinson. 1 vol., 8 vo. New newspaper celebrity, so much so, indeed, that several persons, as in the parallel case of " Rock Me to Sleep," have York: Harper & Brothers.-Rather false in sentiment, and claimed its paternity. The real author, however, is J W. occasionally strained in incident, but nevertheless a readWatson, who, to put the dispute at rest, has published the able novel, as novels now go. verses in a neat volume, and added various other of his The Dodge Club. By James De Mills. 1 vol., 8 ro. Now York: Harper & Brothers.-This is a humorous narrative poetical productions. A handsomely printed book. Vanity Fair. By W. M. Thackeray. 1 vol., 8 vo. New of travel in Italy, in 1859, and is illustrated copiously with York: Harper & Brothers.- A cheap, illustrated edition of engravings. It is full of spirit and fun. this inimitable novel. When such a book can be bought Beatrice. Bythe Hon. Roden Noel. 1 vol., 24 mo. Philade: for thirty-five cents, there is no excuse for not having it J. B. Lippincott & Co.-A gracefully told story, written in in tens of thousands of households. blank verse. The descriptive passages are especially good.

IT WAS WELL SAID, by Zimmerman, that happiness consists, not in possessing much, but in being content with what we possess. To want little is always to have enough. IT IS WOMAN that makes home happy. A man may mar home ; he often does ; but he cannot make a home.