HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.

SENATOR WILSON'S HISTORY OF THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLAVE POWER IN AMERICA* is a work which will certainly be read. The interest of the subject, the reputation of its author, and the ability with which the History is written, will ensure for it an extensive circulation. The work is to consist of three volumes, of more than six hundred pages each. The volume before us begins with the early introduction of slavery into the colonies, and ends with the annexation of Texas as a State. It covers the most exciting period of the Anti-Slavery controversy, and gives full narratives of the struggle at the admission of Missouri, of the imprisonment of William Lloyd Garrison, the Southampton insurrection, and the subsequent establishment of the Liberator; of the formation of the earlier and the later Anti-Slavery societies; of Miss Prudence Crandall's school; of the secession from Lane Seminary; of the presentation and rejection of the Anti-Slavery petitions; of the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy; of the dissensions in the AntiSlavery society and its consequent disruption; of the efforts of John Quincy Adams; of the Amistad captives; of the escape and career of Frederick Douglass; of the rise of the Liberty party; of the doctrine of no union with slave-holders; of the imprisonments of colored seamen from the North in the Southern cities, and the outrages upon Judge Hoar at Charleston; and of the formation, progress, and success of the plot to bring Texas into the Union.

The recital of these topics is of itself sufficient to indicate the exciting character of the themes with which the writer has to do. The fact that the writer had been an actor in not a few of them, and had a warm, not to say an ardent, personal sympathy with the men whose souls were fired with Anti-Slavery zeal, would promise at least an animating narrative. It is all this and more. It is glowing without rant, spirited without extravagance, earnest and positive without being offensively partizan. It is dramatic, condensed, and philosophical. The diction is admirable; the pictures are vivid; the view is comprehensive. That it is never one-sided in its representations of men and events we do not assert. That the veteran, in reciting events and words which once stirred his blood to fever heat, and called forth words which were hailstones, is always charitable to his opponents or construes their acts and words from their own point of view, we should scarcely expect. But that so far

* History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. By HENRY WILVol. I. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872.

SON.

as facts and sayings on both sides are concerned, he aims to be an honest narrator, is most manifest. The writer has had ample assistance and sagacious advisers, and if he prosecutes the work in the same spirit in which he has prepared the first volume, he will make an important contribution to the social and political history of this country. We do not require in such a history, written by such a man, any apology for, or explanation of, the reasons which led so many to look with doubt and hesitation on the movements and the ethics of the first Anti-Slavery agitators. Nor is it fair to demand that the narrator should conjecture what course the AntiSlavery conflict might have taken had it not been precipitated upon the nation. For such disquisitions the senator has no call and no fitness. The work which he could do he has done with a willing zeal and with conspicuous success.

LIFE OF HENRY DUNSTER.*-This little work describes the life and character of one of the most learned of the early ministers of New England, and a man of upright and amiable character. On account of his erudition, judgment, and piety, he was chosen President of the infant College which was established at Cambridge, and labored with much assiduity and self-sacrifice, and with deserved success, for the building up of that now famous institution. But an adoption of Baptist-Anabaptist, as the term then was-opinions necessitated his retirement from his office, and he found it more conducive to his quiet and happiness to spend the last days of his life within the bounds of the neighboring colony of Plymouth.

The memoir by Dr. Chaplin, himself a Baptist clergyman, is interesting, and is instructive, not only for its strictly biographi cal matter, but also for the sketches, which are introduced, of the life and manners of the early settlers of Massachusetts. But Dunster is painted throughout as the victim of intolerance. It is true that there seems to have been some injustice in the failure to make him full compensation for his expenses and losses in the service of the College. But Dr. Chaplin fails, as we think, to make out a very grievous case of intolerance. He says himself (p. 194): "We laugh at the absurdities of the generations which preceded us, and in our turn we may be found vulnerable to the shafts of ridicule." Harvard College was eventually a theological semi

* Life of Henry Dunster, First President of Harvard College. By JEREMIAH CHAPLIN, D.D. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872.

nary, as well as a college, in the time of Dunster. Suppose now that Newton Seminary were a part of Waterville College; suppose, too, that it was the only Baptist institution of the kind in the country; suppose that the establishment of it, for the education of Baptist ministers, had been accomplished by contributions with difficulty spared: and now suppose that Dr. Chaplin, being its President, should publicly baptize his children, and, not content with this act, should rise in the Baptist Church, in Waterville, after a sermon against Pædobaptism, and dispute the doctrine which the minister had inculcated. How long would Dr. Chaplin be allowed to retain his post? But in the time of Dunster, the New England Church was small and weak; it had already suffered from dissension and controversy; religious questions were relatively far more engrossing than at present. We will not dilate on the subject; but simply suggest as a question worth considering, were not the Puritan fathers more the objects than the agents of persecution, in relation to Anabaptists, Quakers, and other discordant sects?

MEMOIR OF ROBERT CHAMBERS.*-The memoirs of the eminent Edinburgh publishers, the brothers William and Robert Chambers, we heartily recommend as one of the most entertaining and really useful books of our times. To all sensible people it will be an agreeable tonic, and, like Franklin's autobiography, it ought to be in the hands of every young man who has his own way to make in the world. The two names have been honorably known for many years by popular works of a high character written for the instruction and benefit of the common people, particularly by "Chambers' Journal" and the "Cyclopædia of English Literature;" and this volume tells us how such distinction, with its attendant advantages, was acquired, and how richly it was deserved. The younger brother, Robert, born in 1802, died a little over two years ago, leaving sketches of his early life, which the survivor, William, now about seventy-two years old, has supplemented to the end, interweaving his own history also to this date, so that the two lives are blended in the narrative as in their course. There is a charm in this association of two such brothers in life and in literature. There is a picturesqueness, a quiet romance, in the history of their early years, with its surroundings

* Memoir of ROBERT CHAMBERS, with Autobiographic Reminiscences of WILLIAM CHAMBERS. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872. 12mo, pp. 313.

of Scotch localities, personages, customs, and traditions, which must give the book wide and lasting favor. Their birth place, "Peebles, an ancient royal burgh on the upper part of the Tweed;' the family-portraits of the improvident father and the exemplary mother; the straits and shifts of poverty in their home; the scanty hard-won education of the boys, and better still their selfeducation and first efforts for relieving the family by supporting themselves; their thirst for knowledge, and finding the "Encyclopædia Britannica" in the old chest; their frugal and diligent ways; their lodgings together in the West Port" at "three shillings a week," their first attempt at a book-stall with the row of their old school books, and the beginning of their printing operations with the "wheezing" old press,-these are pictures that deserve this framing. We should like to enrich our pages with extracts, but must refer our readers to the whole narrative for their satisfaction. It was a stern discipline which these men went through before coming of age; but they were compensated in the result, and the world was benefited by their training. Nowhere is the lesson better taught that poverty and friendlessness need not compel a young man to despair of success or even eminence if he will seek and use knowledge as they did, like them not only shun vices but forego indolence and frivolity, and confront the hardest lot with iron industry and patience. In this instance it may be noted also, as in so many others, that according to the testimony of these men, a poor home, burdened rather than blessed by the father, had the inestimable blessing of a good mother whose "children arise up and call her blessed."

BELLES LETTRES.

WARNER'S SAUNTERINGS.*—There is no need of further endorsing Mr. Warner than to say, that in his "Saunterings" we recognize the same man who was so well known and so much liked in the "Garden." When abroad he is still at home. In his quaint preface, "Misapprehensions Corrected," he gets entertainment for his readers from the monotony and discomfort of a voyage, as before from the infelicities of horticulture. Most of the book is as really notes of European travel as if it wore a more pretentious title; but still he saunters, for he always stands or moves at his ease, and never long lets go his shrewdness and pleasantry what

* Saunterings. By CHARLES D. WARNER, author of "My Summer in a Garden." Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. 16mo, pp. 289.

ever information he has to give. His wit "wanders at its own sweet will." One would think he must be a happy man, or at any rate his readers are likely to be made so for the time. And when we say "one would think," it reminds us how much he is addicted to this particular idiom, as "one sees not," and "one does not," on the twenty-first page. No doubt it is old English, but it may recur too often. We must take him to task more gravely, however, for saying "illy adapted," on the first page of the preface, as if ill were not an adverb as well as a noun and adjective. "Rarely used by good writers," says Worcester. Mr. Warner surely would not say "welly done." By the way, as he is connected with the press in Hartford, the question is suggested, how happens it that for more than half a century so many noted names have been enlisted in the newspapers of that city? The successful men now in that calling there have for their predecessors Whittier, Prentice, Col. Stone, Brainard, and Theodore Dwight.

THE MASQUE OF THE GODS.* -A rich man, on coming to reside in a New England town, purchased pews in the Congregational and the Episcopal churches, being willing, as he said, to patronize both congregations, and both survived the patronage. A brilliant American writer acknowledged that after our late war he believed in a Providence, of which be before doubted; which reminded an eminent jurist of a man who said, "I revere nature," and a hearer's comment, "I should think nature would be now encouraged to go on." The God of Israel and Jesus of Nazareth receive concessions and compliments as well as detraction from some of the radicals of our day, and no doubt will be as little affected by the one as by the other. It is the fashion of a class, taking the cue from certain leaders, first to stand outside of Christianity or of all revealed religion as far as possible, and then to concede some preeminence to said religion among all the systems reviewed. They cultivate what, if it could be realized in our time, would be no better than a monstrous impartiality between heathenism and Christianity, and then please themselves with the conceit of countenancing the latter. We have to associate Mr. Bayard Taylor with the writers here referred to. This poem, the "Masque of the Gods," brings him under our description. Among the dramatis persona are Elohim and Immanuel, along

* The Masque of the Gods. By BAYARD TAYLOR. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. 16mo, pp. 48.