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IMPORTANT LITERARY ANNOUNCEMENT.

CROSBY & NICHOLS

RESPECTFULLY ANNOUNCE THAT

The North American Review,

which has for the last ten years been so ably conducted by Dr. Peabody, passes now into the editorial charge of

PROF. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,

AND

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, ESQ.,

gentlemen, who, for sound and elegant scholarship, have achieved an enviable reputation, both in this country and in Europe; and whose taste, education, and experience, thorough loyalty and sympathy with the progressive element of the times, eminently qualify them for the position they have assumed.

"THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW" is too well known to the literary world to require an extended notice.

"THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW" will maintain in the hands of its new editors its established reputation for independent criticism,

The ablest and most permanent publication of and for well-considered opinions in politics and the kind in America (see Appleton's Cyclops-literature.

spirit of the Review will be thoroughly national and loyal. It will defend and illustrate the distinctive principles on which the institutions of America are founded.

dia), it has through all the changes of manage- In discussing political and social questions, the ment sustained its high position as the leading review of this country, and as an able representative of American mind. Constantly maintaining a high character both for style and critical ability, its influence has been widely felt, and In literature it will avail itself of the best mahas largely contributed to make American liter-terial of thought and scholarship which the counature what it is.

From its commencement it has enlisted the pens of our ablest writers. Its list of editors and contributors includes nearly all our most distinguished authors, and some of our greatest statesmen and jurists, and the reputations of our best known essayists and reviewers are mainly founded upon their contributions to its pages.

try can supply.

In its criticism it will have no ends to serve but those of sound learning and good morals.

Bound by strong associations to the past, in sympathy with the present, hopeful for the future, the Review will do its part in the intellectual movement of the times.

"THE NORTH AMMRICAN REVIEW" is published quarterly on the first days of January, April, July, and October, in numbers of about three hundred pages each, containing matter equal to four ordinary octavo volumes.

TERMS-Five dollars a year, or one dollar and twenty-five cents per number.

A new volume of the Review will commence with the January number, and the publishers trust that the increased expenditures consequent upon the changes proposed in the future conduct of the work will be met by a generous increase of the patronage of the public.

CROSBY & NICHOLS, PUBLISHERS,

117 Washington Street, Boston.

seem to struggle and shift and change, to act ious excitement which sometimes fall on Hinand re-act and combine, without ever touching doo women, devoted herself to Bhowanee, its groundwork, viz., the profound belief that though without becoming one of the harlots life is an illusion, that men and their acts the temple girls usually are. She is pursued and their responsibilities are all shadows by a Brahmin whom she detests, and it is moulded at will by some irresistible, and yet round this pursuit that the incidents of the capricious Fate, which also may be itself story are all hung. It opens with a violent equally an illusion. There is picture after shock to all English ideas—a wife pleading picture of India, the land where production with her husband that he will take a second and destruction seem in open visible warfare, bride, who may bear him a son, while she where on one side of a road vegetation is so who pleads has given him only a daughter, luxuriant that it will, in a year, eat the very the heroine of the tale; and the incident is a foundations of the bridges; while on the other fair example at once of the author's merit may stretch a plain as dreary as one of Nu-and his single failure. The reader undermidia, plain and vegetation being alike seem- stands thoroughly why the wife should proffer ingly boundless. The objects and incidents such a prayer, how the husband would receive and the customs which harmonize so well it, and what, under happy circumstances, with this nature; the vast temples which load might be the condition of the polygamous the land, only overshadowed by yet vaster household. But he is not made to feel ruins; the gorgeous yet bloody ceremonials; the internal action of the first wife's mind— the mad worship of Ehowanee; the feats of that struggle between jealousy and duty hereditary robber chiefs; the bloodthirsty which must in such cases occur, or to see the teaching of the Mussulman priests; the more thoughts which ultimately compel her to a bloodthirsty acts of Hindoo patriots, all have proposal which is, to English ears, almost for the author's mind an interest which he revolting. That was beyond Captain Taysucceeds in exciting within that of his reader lor's power, as it is beyond the power of any also. There is an account in the first volume being save one who has gone through it all, of an intrigue against the King of Beejapoor and who can bear like an English novelist to and its defeat which, in its long-drawn evolu- dissect his own dead feelings. It is only when tions and final catastrophe, reads like a chap-a IIindoo himself succeeds in writing a readter from the "Arabian Nights," and will re-able novel that this pleasure, the revelation call to the reader the days when as he read he of a heart guided by laws Europeans knew almost saw, under all the disguise necessary to the tale, the stately presence of the "good Haroun al Raschid," that solitary caliph who has contrived to obtain a solid habitation in Western thought. The plot of the book is simple enough. Tara, a virgin widow of sixteen, has in one of those fits of wild, relig-gravia.

nothing of, will be afforded us. Till then we can recommend Tara, child widow and devotee, associate of dancing girls, voluntary suttee and convert of the Mohammedan faith, to all who care to wake their imaginations by scenes not laid in the drawing-rooms of Bel

The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges. By of the American war did not immediately return George J. Goschen, M.P., Second edition; revised by the Author. Effingham Wilson.

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to England, as was prophesied in the Times. The American market was well stocked with gold, the English ill stocked, and, as a speculation, the gold could not have been sent to America at a profit. Mr. Goschen shows that indebtedness entirely overrides the causes of a speculative flow of gold, and he explains with the greatest clearness the changes which followed the depreciation of the currency, though he himself is obviously puzzled with the great fall in the price of gold which followed the battle of Gettysburg.-Spectator, 21 Nov.

even by principle, is the rarest as it is one of as your capacity will allow you to do, compel the most painful of human weaknesses. It is that thought to bring you to some sort of half indecision, such as is thus described by conclusion, and then carry out the conclusion Foster, an indecision which has a root in the without consulting any human being. Clear conscience as well as the temperament, which thought, continuous thought, and silenceis the curse of men's lives. "A man has, per- all exercised on the daily trifles of lifehaps, advanced a considerable way towards these habits, which are none of them difficult, a decision, but then lingers at a small dis- will so harden the mind as in a very short tance from it, till necessity, with a stronger period to make it incapable of indecision. hand than conviction, impels him upon it. The moral good of the change it would require He cannot see the whole length of the ques- an article to illustrate; the social good has tion, and suspects the part beyond his sight never been better described than in this to be the most important, for the most essen- paragraph from the essay: "Another adtial point and stress of it may be there. He vantage of this character is, that it exempts fears that certain possible consequences, if from a great deal of interference and obstructhey should follow, would cause him to re- tive annoyance which an irresolute man may proach himself for his present determination. be almost sure to encounter. Weakness, in He wonders how this or the other person every form, tempts arrogance; and a man would have acted in the same circumstances; may be allowed to wish for character of a eagerly catches at anything like a respecta-kind with which stupidity and impertinence ble precedent; would be perfectly willing to may not make so free. When a firm, decisive forego the pride of setting an example, for the spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how safety of following one; and looks anxiously the space clears around a man, and leaves him round to know what each person may think room and freedom. The disposition to interon the subject; while the various and opposite rogate, dictate, or banter, preserves a reopinions to which he listens, perhaps, only spectful and politic distance, judging it not serve to confound his perception of the track unwise to keep the peace with a person of so of thought by which he had hoped to reach much energy. A conviction that he underhis conclusion. Even when that conclusion stands, and that he wills with extraordinary is obtained, there are not many minds that force, silences the conceit that intended to might not be brought a few degrees back into perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the dubious hesitation by a man of respected unmalice that was disposed to attack him. derstanding saying, in a confident tone, There is a feeling, as in respect to fate, that 'Your plan is injudicious; your selection is the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be unfortunate; the event will disappoint you.'" right, or that, at least, they will be accomPerhaps one-half of mankind have minds pre-plished." Most "improving" literature is cisely so constituted, and one-half at least of rubbish; but we doubt if any man ever read them are aware of the mischief within. It is this essay without feeling that he had swalto such men that John Foster addressed him-lowed a mental tonic, and it is because it self with advice which, as it is scattered heals that the medicine, despite its own bitthrough the whole essay, we are reluctantly terness and the nasty powder in which it is compelled to summarize. It is briefly this. conveyed, still sells so well among men who Upon all occasions of life which are not of the can tell physic from nostrums. last importance, think as steadily and clearly

STORIES OF MONOMANIA.*

From The Spectator. tions how many times they went up and ́ came down-stairs on a certain interesting morning, when they got their breakfast, of what it consisted, and all such little minutime, which would be intolerable if they did not carry with them the air of absolute and indisputable reality-the minute faithfulness of actual narrative that makes one listen as to a verbal account of scenes personally witnessed by the narrator of which every detail is still fresh in his memory.

THIS is a remarkable book. Imaginative power is apt, in general, to misrepresent life in one almost invariable direction. Whether it deal with the play of character, or the force of passion, or the pathos of sentiment, it generally represents life as too interesting-more interesting than the truth; and if it fails to do this, it fails to be interesting itself, and becomes incapable of literary effect. Imaginative power must heighten the Yet there is more of distinct idea traced colors of life, and give a golden, or, at least, in these stories than De Foe ever admitted. a silver burnish to its monotony and its cares. The various characters, though described just In but one instance of firstrate imaginative in the way in which a very faithful but unpower that we remember has it hitherto been imaginative mind would seize them, are disotherwise. De Foe seemed to stamp his won- tinguished by definite peculiaritics, and cast derful pictures on copper, making them at in given types. Though there is no attempt once as dull and wretched as the wretchedest at all to color a picture, no attempt "to conand most arid life, and yet, from the extraor-ceive the character as a whole," yet a single dinary vigor and minuteness, the dingy fidelity, the sordid earthiness of his workmanship, he carries away the attention of his readers with as much success as if they had themselves been plunged into that world of leaden cares and gains and risks and crimes and dangers. He was the Vulcan of English writers of fiction, who forged all his scarcely, indeed, a story at all,-"The works of art out of a base metal, yet forged them with a truly godlike skill and dexterity, and rises himself before the imagination as a limping smith begrimed with the smoke and dust of his own workshop, yet moulding his drossy material in a furnace of unearthly

heat.

face of it is generally left sharply stamped on the narrative, though only one face. Of course, this is essential to the very plan of delineating monomania, which is a more intellectual design than De Foe would have generally adoped. Take, for example, one of the most unpretending of all these stories,

Cynic." When the tale is told, we do not feel that we know the man except on the one side on which his eccentricity has developed itself. Yet how thoroughly we understand that, the profound mortifications in early life which made the boy acutely sensible to the absurdities of young enthusiasm; the The present writer is, to a certain extent, discovery that the faithful dog on the stage of the school of De Foe. There is not a lit- was faithful only to a concealed sausage, not tle of the same power of presenting the din- to his master; the discovery that the lock of giness of life with a minute fidelity that riv- auburn hair, which, as he had hoped, was u ets our attention, without adding to it a voluntary keepsake from his lady love, had particle of imaginative lustre. Ho generally been really made up by her brother from the works, like De Foc, in copper, and frequently hairs left in her comb and hairbrush; the succeeds, like De Foc, in graving his notion shock of seeing the lovely Italian actress, who on it so deeply and indelibly that it is even was playing the part of Juliet, take off on her more striking than if it had had in it more beautiful lips an exact imprint of the burntof the transmuting touch of ordinary imag-cork mustache of her impassioned lover; the inative insight. Like De Foe, he almost al- overpowering impression produced by the ways succeeds in making you think he is clergyman's wish that his congregation could copying directly from actual experience, and have tails to wag to show their interest, or not really creating at all. He produces an want of interest in his discourses; all these, impression exactly in the same way as De and many more than these accidental mixFoe, by telling you anxiously about the arti- tures of the ridiculous with a certain percles of furniture in the apartments of his he-sonal excitement of feeling, engender naturoes, by the particularity with which he men- rally before our eyes that morbid disposition Shirley Hall Asylum; or, the Memoirs of a to laugh at anything serious, which made

Monomaniac." London: W. Freeman.

the Cynic a partial monomaniac:

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