language are so essentially different from our own. They have come here in numbers so large, that their national peculiarities are perpetuated, and they assimilate slowly with our people. It is by no means certain that it would contribute to their physical and moral advantage, or that it would be just, to take from them a drink which they and their ancestors have ever been accustomed to regard as necessary. They have habits peculiar to themselves, and have a right to indulge them, if not injurious to the community among whom they reside. They are honest, law-keeping, and industrious citizens. They take their wives and children with them, when they drink. They are merry and go home sober. If the law forbids the manufacture of the article, and they are driven to the miserable, villainous, drugged, sulphuric acid, and bad whisky mixtures (for they must have something), which will be clandestinely conveyed in any quantity, despite the most stringent laws that can be enacted, they will suffer a dreadful moral deterioration, and be reduced to some extent to the condition of the whisky and gin-drinking classes of the manufacturing towns of Great Britain.

There are unfortunates born into this world, who, from a diseased condition of mind or body, or both, or from inherited waywardness, ruinously imbibe alcoholic poison. This class of persons deserve and require the sympathy and assistance of their more fortunate neighbors; and the law ought to take care of them, because they are unable to take care of themselves. When they marry, they bring wretchedness to their families. They neglect to provide for them; they squander the earnings of others, and rush headlong to destruction. On precisely the same principle that lunatic asylums are appointed, should these people be cared for and restrained, as those should be restrained whose cupidity induces them to contribute to their un doing. There ought to be an asylum for drunkards where they could be confined-not as felons or with the guilty -but treated with kindness and consideration.

This institution should be so arranged that no disgrace would necessarily accrue to a residence there. The odium, if any, should be completely removed, by having the committal come from the

hands of the family physician, perhaps, who knows the case, instead of from the official, who knows nothing of the matter but that it involves costs. A place like this, where, like a weather-beaten vessel, the victim of self-indulgence could haul up and refit, would accomplish much for this class of the community who swell our criminal calendar, and contribute to increase the expenses of pauperism, as well as furnish the exciting cause of riot and disturbance. To this institution every person found intoxicated should be sent.

VIII. THE PRESENT DANGER.

Those nations which are accustomed to government espionage, might be tolerant with regard to inquiries into the contents of their pantries and cellars; and in this country, a desire to serve the moral interests of society may induce endurance for awhile, but excessive stringency in the law will surely become irksome, and produce injurious reaction. It is but a popular fiction that everything, which by abuse may intoxicate, is, when properly used, poisonous in its effect and baneful in its influence. Nor is it true that Christian self-denial requires forbearance, with regard to anything that is believed to be necessary or useful, because there are some who will use it to their undoing. If, in our apple districts, families regard a glass of cider as desirable, or in our vine-growing communities, or among our foreign population, light beer or mild wines are considered necessary, it is not plain that the law has any right to forbid their use, or that it is expedient to do so.

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Festina lente" is an important maxim in all movements which demand a radical change in society. Legislation cannot relieve Christians and philanthropists from the necessity of prac ticing the virtue of temperance, and inducing others to practice it. While looking up to Hercules, as did the wagoner in the fable, there is danger of our forgetting the duties and responsi bilities of individual effort. There is reason, above all, to fear that the final result of the attempt to suppress the use of alcoholic liquors, by prohibitive laws, may be a relapse into a worse condition of things than prevailed before the temperance reform began.

A CROP OF NOVELS.-The autumn brings us, along with the pears and grapes, a large ingathering of novels, and these, like the fruit, are some of them under-ripe, some just ripe enough, and some so overripe as to be rotten. Among the names to be recorded are Twice Married, Clouds and Sunshine, Oakfield, Ethel, or the Double Error, Aspirations, Light and Darkness, The Old Homestead, The Old Farm House, The Rag Picker, Isora's Child, The Elder Sister, The Match Girl, The Deserted Wife, etc., etc. Strange as it may appear, we confess to have read the greater part of these without having been obliged to send for a physician, or exciting the solicitude of our friends as to the continued sanity of our intellects. At the same time, it should be remembered that we have had much experience in this line, and that our head is become very hard. We should not advise any immature or unseasoned brain to expose itself to the same operation.

Twice Married, as the readers of this Magazine are aware, is a pleasant and graceful little humorous tale of New England life, full of the characteristics of the region to which it relates, abounding in truthful descriptions of nature, and with a plot most ingeniously contrived and wrought out. As a brat of our own nursing, we entertain for it, of course, a most motherly kindness and regard, and commend it heartily to the good will of all strangers.-Clouds and Sunshine is a story by Reade, whose piquant and charming sketches of Christie Johnson and Peg Woffington have lifted him at once to a high rank among our tale-wrights. There is such dramatic life and movement in his incidents, such cleverness of characterization, and such crispness and vivacity of style, that his books please almost everybody. They have all the braciness and glitter of a clear, cold morning of the autumn. Even in those parts which relate to the close, artificial life of theatres and cities, there is a sound and healthful feeling for nature, and a good honest morality. His habit of writing for the stage has taught him to leave out the dull parts (by which we mean wearisome descriptions of

AND

REPRINTS.

persons and things), and to concentrate his story into dialogues and actions. The same habit, on the other hand, sometimes betrays him into flippancy, but he is always genial, entertaining, and lively.Oakfield is a most serious and earnest exposition of the life of the English officers in India, written by Lieutenant Arnold, a son of the lamented Dr. Arnold, and brother to Matthew Arnold, the poet, whose works were recently reviewed in these pages. Describing the experiences of a young ensign, of strong religious convictions, who went to the East in the course of his professional duties, it gives the most startling pictures of the moral degradation and false aims of the greater part of the official corps. With all his father's lofty sense of duty, and all his brother's fine culture and poetic sensibility, he exposes the selfishness, the animalism, and the low, worldly ambition of the army; but while he writes with the sturdy zeal of a reformer, he maintains the good sense of the scholar and the gentleman. His book, relating to a branch of English politics in which we Americans do not often interest ourselves, and having for its end an important moral rather than an agreeable narrative, will not elicit the admiration of regular novel readers, and yet there is so much fine description, high character, and true sentiment in it, that we hope even that class will not be deterred from its perusal. The death of the late Dr. Arnold was universally regretted by the Christian world; but, in the bequest of two such gifted and noble sons as Matthew and this young lieutenant, he has almost compensated us for his loss.

As to the other novels on our list, we cannot speak of them in detail. They are of various merits, some pretty good, but the most of them indifferent; that is, as Pope unjustly says of women, they have no character at all. They are stories of passion and sentiment, without much local truth or probability of incident, and incapable of lasting effects. They are written mainly by females, who, with acute and lively feelings, and a tolerable command of English, have yet no decided artistic impulse, and who now write novels, as

they formerly wrote tales and verses for the newspapers, partly to get rid of a present uneasiness, but mainly in the hope of reaping a pecuniary reward. They are rather inspired by the successes of others than by any genius of their own: and the consequence is, a great lack of originality in their plots and characters, and a kind of stereotyped flux of sentiment. Mr. Charles Dickens and Mrs. Stowe are answerable for a large number of these offenders. The Little Nell and her old Grandfather of the one, and the Uncle Toms and George Harrises of the other, are the parents of an immense progeny of similar personages. Among our American novels, in particular, it seems to be absolutely essential that they should contain, one shabby old gentleman, who is also a perfect miracle of goodness, a Lamplighter, a Rag-picker, a Newsman, or what not, a little girl or little boy, deserted by their relatives, whom the old gentleman provides for, and who are also miracles of precocious goodness, one hardened, desperate villain, who, for inscrutable reasons, insists upon persecuting the little one, one amiable, and pious, and sweet, and allaccomplished young lady of the upper circles, who goes about among the poor, quoting Scripture and doing an immense deal of indefinable good; and one selfish, fashionable woman, very rich, who turns out to be the mother of the little girl or the little boy, and leaves her or him all her wealth, when he or she marries the pious young lady or her pious brother, and everybody, including the old Rag-pickers and Lamplighters, get vastly happy. Or else our novelists take up the temperance and anti-slavery "dodges," and perfectly inundate us with beastly drunkards, who afterwards reform and become model husbands, fathers, and citizens, or with villainous Haleys, unprincipled and cruel, but gentlemanly Southerners, and marvelous fugitive negroes. One reads so much, indeed, of these classes, that he is tempted to forswear temperance and anti-slavery all the days of his life. As to the notions of happiness which some of these writers cherish, we quote a specimen from one of the novels before us. Describing a New Year's day, after all the characters had got fairly through their troubles, and the right ones were married, it says:

"They evinced their joy and hilarity in 'blind-man's buff,' 'searching for the key-hole,' 'hunt the slipper,' and all sorts of forfeitings,' during which Julie was kissed, and Carrie was kissed (suspicious Charlie Wells not playing fair by any means) a hundred times, and Annie was kissed, and they all kissed Toney, and Henry, and Charlie Wells (who, when he was questioned, said he liked it), and Davy, and even the boy Buff, who kissed right back again (as if he was no nigger at all!), and they rollicked and raced to their heart's content, while everybody kissed good old Davy, and Davy kissed everybody else, and there seemed to be no end to the love, and joy, and ecstacy of this gloriously happy gathering.”

We presume, therefore, that they have gone on kissing to this very day, and that the pop of the smackings must, by this time, be as loud as the rattle of musketry at Sebastopol.

The writers of these novels mean to be very moral: the sentiments they depict or inculcate are all, as Sir Peter Teazle would say, "excellent sentiments:" they would scorn to be thought anything else than the superfinest friends of virtue; and yet the highest that most of them attain is to a milk-and-water, puling, superficial and nauseous sentimentalism. They work upon the sensibilities, and not upon the conscience or the will; and the good feelings they excite, by their highly-colored pictures, are about as lasting as the fine friendships a fellow forms over his cups, or the religion he puts on during a stress of weather at sea. It is the easiest thing in the world to invent a series of characters, and place them in situations which shall draw tears from the eyes of every reader: the French literature and the French stage abound in tales and dramas, commonly of the domestic sort, which are positively heart-rending; all the while, too, they are radically false in principle and untrue to life. But it is not easy to create a character which shall enlarge our ideals of the power and greatness of our nature, nor combine circumstances into a clear and beautiful narrative, which the reader will forever carry in his memory as an inspiration and a charm. Is it not, however, at these ends that fiction should aim, and not at the excitement of transient, and, for the most part, fictitious emotion?

What the "mob of ladies who write with ease" now-a-days chiefly fail in, is charac

ter-the principal element of success in fiction, as it is the highest and best attainment of conduct in actual life. They seldom get beyond a few conventional symbols, which they christen with new names, and call characters. Yet there is no more individuality in them, no more organic life, than there is in the show images which the boys make at school. After reading four or five hundred pages of their sayings and doings, all the conception you have of them is of puppets, one of whom represented the darling little Annie, and another the good old David, and a third the dark-visaged villain, Mr. Anthracite. They are brought together, put through a certain course of events, alternately adverse and propitious (and most generally improbable), and then disappear, when there is an end of them altogether. Like the infant of whom the wag wrote the epitaph, "they are so soon done for, we wonder what they were begun for." Born inanities, they die inanities, and nobody is helped, and nothing is gained. Now, old Homer's heroes, though three thousand years old, are to-day as distinct as statues; and so are Shakespeare's, and Cervantes', and Fielding's, and Scott's, and Thackeray's, and some of Dickens's. Our children's children will know them intimately as we know them; but as for that rabble of pretended personages which crowds the pages of our current fiction-pages which it is so sad a waste of time to write or to read-it will pass away like the figures of the magic lantern, when the candles are lighted.

BIOGRAPHIES.-In the Memoir of Sergeant S. Prentiss, we have an account of a meteor which flamed for a brief while in the southwestern skies, and then suddenly disappeared. He was one of those brilliant phenomena, which dazzle us into admiration without producing much influence upon the course and destinies of the world. Endowed with quick sympathies, large reasoning powers, fertile fancy, and fluency of tongue, Mr. Prentiss was a born orator, and, like most orators, wrought the most lively immediate, but not lasting, effects. While he lived, men hung upon his words with transfixed attention, but as soon as he passed away, the memory, alone, of the pleasure he had given remained in the minds of those who had heard him speak. Unlike VOL. VI.-35

the fame of the statesman, who leaves the impress of his genius on the action of society, or that of the poet, whose numbers are immortal, the fame of the orator is apt to perish with his body. A few of his more intimate friends may recall his personal character, and cherish the good and noble qualities which made him dear to their hearts, but the majority of his contemporaries forget him, as they do the actor, almost as soon as he has quit the stage.

It is doubtful, therefore, whether any important public purpose is served by an attempt to perpetuate the fame of one who is simply an orator, and whose speeches or deeds do not perpetuate themselves. Out of the small circle of his friends, the memorial of him will possess no more than a feeble interest. His significance scarcely entitles him to more than a passing record, certainly not to the dignified and imposing embalmment of two stately volumes. We have evidence of the truth of this in the case before us. Mr. Prentiss was a brilliant orator; he was endeared to his family and friends by his generous qualities; but beyond a few temporary results, made no mark upon his day and generation, or, at least, none equal to his affluent endowments. We are indebted to him for no great truths, for no important measures, for no work of art that enriches our race, and for no high example of character, by which, though dead, he yet speaks. We find the two long volumes of details and correspondence, consequently, tedious; and we suspect the public will be of the same sentiment; although, to the personal acquaintance of the subject of the memoir, it will likely prove most acceptable.

As an orator, it is beyond a doubt that Mr. Prentiss was extraordinarily accomplished. We remember to have heard him discourse to an assembly of whigs, in Masonic Hall, during the hard cider political campaign, and still retain a fresh impression of his forcible logic, his fine manner, his exuberance of illustration, and his easy wit. The political rostrum, as our meetings are apt to be conducted in times of high excitement, is not the place for the exhibition of the nicer traits of oratory. A loud voice, vehement gesticulation, commonplace party clap-trap, and stale anecdotes more frequently carry the day there, than right feeling, scholarly allusion, balanced

periods, subtle argument, and graceful action. But Mr. Prentiss was so naturally eloquent, the artistic genius was so strong within him, that he never had occasion to resort to the usual and vulgar shifts, to enchain or arouse his audience. The sympathetic tone of his voice, the earnestness of his conviction, and his ready command of his powers, at once charmed them into listeners. He modulated both his voice and his action, with an easy, instinctive grace; he selected the most fitting words, as if by inspiration, while the variety of his resources, both of imagination and memory, did not allow him to be dull. He was not so highly cultivated a person as some of those who describe him, in this biography, represent; but he had read variously, and, remembering all that he read, applied it with facility and tact. In the speeches that are preserved, we do not discover any great originality of thought or expression, and yet they contain many evidences of a most impressible and active fancy. His letters are quite bald, evincing warmth of affection toward his friends, but no remarkable intellectual vigor nor rare culture. The one conclusion that we derive from reading all that is said of him, is, that he was capable of vastly greater and better things than he ever achieved.

Like many other brilliant young men of this country, Mr. Prentiss did not make the best use of the rich talents committed to his stewardship. There was a moral deficiency in his constitution, which was the cause alike of his intellectual shortcoming and of his failures in the conduct of life. Going to a region of country where the saddest social vices prevailed, at a time, too, when society was in a kind of inchoate or forming state, he forgot the sterner principles of his birth-place and his youth, and fell in with what he ought to have restrained. We do not say that he was a gross offender against the laws of morals in any respect, nor do we refer to his errors in this way with a view to depreciate or dishonor him personally; but we think that there is so instructive a lesson to be learned from his career that we are unwilling to pass over this aspect of it. Indeed, if the memoir have any value at all for the outside public, it will be found precisely in the moral which it conveys. Had he been as thoroughly conscientious or religious a man

as he was honorable-had he made the Christian code, instead of the code of honor, his rule, there is no telling, with his large and popular abilities, and his noble impulses, what good he might not have effected, in the peculiar relations into which he was thrown. But he was not strong enough to resist the current of opinion around him, and he departed without having achieved the greatness to which he was otherwise equal. We read, with a deep feeling of sorrow, of the admiration which his intellectual displays excited, of the exquisite friendship he cherished, of his ardent sympathy in the popular movements of Europe, and of the generous, self-sacrificing disposition which he always showed toward the unfortunate and smitten-because we are forced to think, at the same time, of the splendid and beneficent results which might have been, but were not, achieved by such gifts of mind and heart.

-In striking contrast, in almost every aspect, with Prentiss's life, is that suggested to us by Extracts from the Diary and Correspondence of the late Amos Lawrence, which has been recently published by his son. He was not a man of great faculties, nor of extensive learning, but a plain, practical, plodding, unambitious merchant, and who yet, by a rigid adherence to his sense of duty, in the administration of his wealth. succeeded in doing a world of good, and in connecting his name with the gratitude of large numbers of men, for many years.to come. Removing from Groton, in Massachusetts, to Boston, at an early period of his life, he engaged in mercantile business. and succeeded, by strict integrity and diligence, in accumulating a large fortune, which he distributed, from year to year, and almost from day to day, in various acts of charity. In one year we find it noted that he expended over one hundred thousand dollars, the most of it in endowing academies, supporting clergymen, diffusing books, and helping the needy. He not only gave away his money freely, which is a cheap kind of benevolence, but he interested himself personally in the objects of his regard. It was a principle with him that all he possessed "belonged to the Lord," and his chief solicitude, in the latter part of his life, when he was much confined to his house by illness, was that he should make a wise