IX.-ORIENTAL AND WESTERN SIBERIA: A Narrative of Seven Years' Explorations and Adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, the Kirgis Steppes, Chinese Tartary, and part of Central Asia. By THOMAS WITLAM ATKINSON; with a Map and numerous Illustrations. Same Publishers. 1858. Pp. 533. X.-LA PLATA, the Argentine Confederation and Paraguay.

Being a Narrative of the Exploration of the Tributaries of the River La Plata and Adjacent Countries during the years 1853, '54, '55, and '56, under the orders of the United States Government.. By THOMAS J. PAGE, U. S. N., Commander of the Expedition; with Map and numerous Engravings. Same Publishers. 1859. Pp. 632.

XI. MISSIONARY TRAVELS and Researches in South Africa; including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of Africa, &c. By DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL. D., D. C. L., &c. Same Publishers. 1858. Pp. 732. XII.-TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES in North and Central Africa. From the Journal of an Expedition undertaken under the auspices of H. B. M's. Government in the years 1849-1855. BY HENRY BARTH, Ph. D., D. C. L., &c. In three volumes. Same Publishers. 1859.

to

Instead of an imperfect notice of these gatherings from far distant lands with which the Messrs. Harper have favoured us, we propose group them into a regular Article of the next number of the Review. In this Article we propose to give extracts from some of the most interesting matter in each. This course, we are sure, will be more satisfactory to our readers than if we noticed them slightly here, as our want of space would compel us to do.

We next group together

XIII.-POEMS. By FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859. Pp. 312.

XIV.-LEGENDS AND LYRICS: A Book of Verses. By ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. New York: Appletons. 1858. Pp. 264.

XV.-ANDROMEDA and other Poems. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1858. Pp. 111.

It would be quite superfluous to say that Mrs. Kemble is a woman of great talent, but as it is certainly true that non omnia possumus omnes, we are bound to say that she is not a poetess of the highest order. As Mrs. Browning could, by no means, read Shakspeare as does Mrs. Kemble, so there is a vast difference between their poetry.

Mrs. Kemble's thoughts seem almost invincibly to turn to melancholy, but it is lit up with fancy. There is a tendency to philosophy —that is, a vein deeper than sentiment.

We copy first a Sonnet which all our readers will call beautiful, esspecially all who have daughters or sisters about seventeen.

I know a maiden with a laughing face,

And springing feet like wings;-the light that flies
Forth from the radiant dancing of her eyes,

Is full of mischievous and mirthful grace.

I know a maiden you might scarce think fair
The first time that across your path she past,

And suddenly you would be fettered fast
In the thick meshes of her chestnut hair,
And in her floating motions, gay and glad,
And in the sparkling triumph of her mirth:
Like summer rain-showers twinkling to the earth,
Through sudden sun-gleams, when the sky is sad,
When all the shrubberies rock in rustling glee,
And clouds of blossoms fall from every tree.

Here is another Sonnet in a darker strain, picturing, too truly, the

actual world:

Oh weary, weary world! how full thou art
Of sin, of sorrow, and all evil things!
In thy fierce turmoil, where shall the sad heart
Released from pain, fold its unrested wings?
Peace hath no dwelling here, but evermore
Loud discord, strife and envy, fill the earth
With fearful riot, whilst unhallowed mirth
Shrieks frantic laughter forth, leading along,
Whirling in dizzy trance, the eager throng,
Who bear aloft the overflowing cup,

With tears, forbidden joys and blood filled up.
Quaffing long draughts of death; in lawless might,
Drunk with soft harmonies, and dazzling light,

So rush they down to the eternal night.

We do not think that Mrs. Kemble improves. Her early poems were more interesting than the later ones. These are too subjective and monotonous. Her prose is more poetical, in general, than her verse, and certainly much more picturesque. Still, it would not be safe to say what she is not capable of, if she laid aside her wilfulness.

It is generally known, we believe, that the owner of the pretty name attached to the second of these volumes, is the daughter of Barry Cornwall-"Golden-tressed Adelaide."

There is, of course, much immaturity, and the other faults of youth, but there is much promise. Instead of any attempt to characterize Miss Procter, we will copy one of her poems:

The fall thou darest to despise-
May be the slackened angel's hand
Has suffered it, that he may rise

And take a firmer, surer stand;
Or trusting less to earthly things,
May henceforth learn to use his wings.

And judge none lost, but wait, and see,
With hopeful pity, not disdain;
The depth of the abyss may be

The measure of the height of pain
And love and glory that may raise
This soul to God in after days!

SPEAKERS of English may tolerate hexameters, because of the passion fine scholars have for them, and because Longfellow and Kingsley choose to write beautifully in them, but nothing can make of them natural English poetry. No lover of Greek but must admire the skill with which Mr. Kingsley has wrought in the "gold-strung loom," this story of Andromeda; wonderfully are Hellenic thoughts and epithets interwoven with the verse; yet it is rather a marvel of ingenuity, than a proper poem.

afar, like a dawn in the midnight, Rose from their sea-weed chamber the choir of the

mystical sea-maids.

Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat
loud at their coming,

Watching the bliss of the gods, as they wakened
the cliffs with their laughter.

Onward they came in their joy, and before them the
roll of the surges,

Sunk, as the breeze sunk dead, into smooth green
foam-flecked marble,

Awed; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the

mountain were silent.

Onward they came in their joy, more white than

the foam which they scattered,

Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining; above them

in worship

Hovered the terns, and the sea-gulls swept past them

on silvery pinions,

Echoing softly their laughter; and the great sea-horses
which bore them

Curved up their crests in their pride to the

delicate arms of the maidens,

Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rain-fall,

unharming,

Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs,
and the coils of the mermen.

Your first thought is, How Greek! the second, After all, there is an absence of the Greek abandon; it is the Christian Anglo-Saxon looking on in the midst of his æsthetic admiration, with a moral horror at the absence of souls in the sea-nymphs.

This is the veil that Pallas Athené gives Andromeda :

In it she wove all creatures that teem in the

womb of the ocean,

Nereid, siren and triton, and dolphin and arrowy fishes
Glittering round, many-hued, on the flame-red folds

of the mantle.

In it she wove, too, a town where gray-haired kings
sat in judgment;

Sceptre in hand, in the market they sat, doing right

by the people,

Wise while above watched Justice, and near, far-seeing

Apollo.

Round it she wove for a fringe all herbs of the earth

and the water,

Violet, asphodel, ivy, and vine-leaves, roses and lilies,
Coral and sea-fan, and tangle, the blooms and the
palms of the ocean:-

Of the miscellaneous poems, we only quote the following:

A FAREWELL.

My fairest child, I have no song to give you;

No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray:
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long :
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One great, sweet song.

XVI.-A NEW HISTORY of the Conquest of Mexico. In which Las Casas' Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully vindicated. By ROBT. ANDERSON WILSON, Counsellor at Law; author of "Mexico and Its Religion," &c. Philadelphia: Challen & Son. 1859. Pp. 539.

This is a criticism, not a history.

are,

How radical Mr. Wilson's views will appear in an extract from a note from Mr. Prescott himself: "Truth is mighty, and will prevail; and if you can furnish the means of arriving at it in this fair historical question, you are certainly bound to do so. If I should not become a convert to your views, it would not be strange, considering that I have been so long accustomed to look only on one side of the matter; and that your theory, moreover, if established, would convert what I have hitherto done into mere chateaux en Espagne.”

Judge Wilson holds the Mexican picture writings to be mere monkish fabrications. He sweeps away Bernal Diaz, Fernando de Alva, Boturnini, Clavigero, Veytia, &c., as all unreliable-mere "gross and utterly unfounded exaggerations;" "all credence in their relations," he holds, "should be annihilated." The only original documents, he contends, are the despatches of Cortez, which are grossly exaggerated, and

the writings of Gomora, which bear as much relation to the truth, as Robinson Crusoe does to the history of Alexander Selkirk.

For the demolition of the picture-writing, the author quotes Albert Gallatin, who, it appears, had no faith in them. In the discrediting of the monkish histories, he is sustained by Mr. Secretary Cass, who wrote an Article in the North American Review in 1840, taking similar ground. Gen. Cass says, in a letter to Judge Wilson,-"I was led, some years since, to investigate the truth of the early reports of the state of civilization among the Mexicans at the time of the Spanish Conquest. I became satisfied, to use your language, that the accounts were not merely exaggerations, but fabrications; and I am glad to find that impression has been confirmed by the able and critical inquiry you have made."

Judge Wilson holds that the structures at Palenque, Uxmal, &c., are Phoenician, that the Aztecs are not descended from these Phoenicians, who are extinct, but are mere Indians, very much like our Red He denies that the Aztecs ever practised human sacrifice, or that they ever erected large buildings of any kind. The pyramid of Cholula he declares to be a mere earth-mound, like those in the Valley of the Mississippi.

men.

In return for demolishing these "romances" and "Mr. Prescott's magnificent tale of the Conquest of Mexico," Mr. Wilson gives us very little indeed. The style of his work is rough; it is full of repetition; its constructions are more uncertain than those it attempts to demolish. The author knows little of ethnology; nothing at all of comparative philology. He is strong in destruction, weak in edification; an iconoclast, not a Reformer.

The Phoenician origin of Palenque is not made out; the extinction of the Palenque builders is, to say the least, not very probable; the marks of connection between them and the Aztecs are not swept away by Mr. Wilson;* his theory of the injury arising from intermixture of races is carried altogether too far. And what are we to think of such ineffable matter as the following?

"The solution of this tradition, concerning Osiris Denis and his son Hercules, probably is, that the elder of the two returning to his Egyptian kingdom, left the affairs of the Turdetanians to the jurisdic

*Thus, there are a large number of clay idols in Mexico. Mr. Wilson says: “They appear all of one type, to have had an allegorical character, and to be very ancient. With much hesitation we have ventured a theory, that they are the production of a race, intervening between the civilized builders of the temples, and the savages who now crouch in their shades." Why may not the savages be the degenerate descendants of the temple builders?