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428 Afonthig literary Record. [May, be looked for. They may scotch the snake: who shall be vain enough to say that they will kill it? Mr. Smuckers book is a valuable addition to our means of inform- ation on the subject of Russia. It is well written. The style is neither ambitious nor common-place, but generally clear and good. Tbe author possesses in a con- siderable degree also, that rarest of all gifts in a historian, the power of irrative; and his people, events, and scenes pass naturally before us. The subject is one the details of which needed to be gazid, and this seems also to us to have been very nicely done. We can set our critical imprimatur upon it as a good book, without any compunctious visitings of conscience. Literary Criticisms and other Papers. By the kite Horace Binney Wallace, Esq., of Phi lade~phia. Philade~phia: Parry& ifeMillan. IT is said there are a thousand critics for one creator. Tis a mistake we doubt. At least we are sure it may be so in America. If the list of American poets, which now rivals Doggetta City Directory for multitude of names, be any criterion, tis even so, and the hand of little employment (as a poketss or creator) hath the daintier sense. Yet certain it is that critics, in the arbitrary sense of that term, do not abound in this our mart and factory of books. Every book-man keeps a puffer, as the man of the magical razor-strop kept a poet: but even the literary dig. nity and acumen of a McGrawler are rarely approached. For the most part like another friend of leetle PaulsT~ong Ned, by namethey carry an empty pis- teL Yet indeed, also, they cry stand and deliver, to a true man as impudently as though it were double-shotted with knowledge and discretion. In such a time, and with the daiW slang of puffery yet buzzing in our ears, it is really pleasant to catch, rising with a pure and equal tone, a note or two of real criticism. Such you may hear if you will listen a little to Mr. Wallace. It is true, his affec- tions frequently mislead himas whom do they not ?but we can not quarrel with the kindly impulse. It shows through him so transparently, that we can not find fault with it. But where friendship does not bind its bandage over his eyes, he sees with a free and learned spirit into the heart of things. He has an artists eye, and a poets instinct, combined with the ripe judgment and polished keenness of a critic. Running through all he writes is a nice vein of philosophical thought. His writing has also the merit of frequent novelty, as well as profound philosophy. He is very guilty of thinking for himselfa rare crime now-n-days. Nor is he de- terred by the mystery of reputation. That strange spell, a name, has no power to paralyze him. He approaches the literary giants, under whose huge legs the rest of the world is content to creep, and examines them simply as enlarged specimens of the genus author. He investigates their claims to admiration deferentially, but without fear, and states his decision with modest freedom. His paper on Washing- ton Irving is one of the finest and most satisfactory pieces of criticism in the lan- guage; and his incidental dissertation on humor, the nearest approach to a just phi- losophical analysis of that delicate and etherial quality of the heart, as developed in literature, we have ever read. With the little slips induced by personal friend- ship taken away, he stands foremost, to our mind, amongst American critics. His early death lends a sad charm to the graceful etchings of his hand, and we read them with a constant regreta constant wish that he could have lived to enrich 1856.] MontHy Literary Record. 429 the language with more mature and grander works. The most striking character- istic of his mind is a sedate and courteous but sturdy manliness. His writings are nowhere for a moment tinged with the slightest shade of flippancy. This collection of his works is a hook to read with a quiet and lingering relish. The chai~ is, however, not in his style. That is rather elaborate, and not al- ways transparent. It is in the justness and delicate appropriateness of the thought conveyed. His mind has also this peculiarity, that although subtle, it is never treacherous. It never betrays him into refining away the truth. In fine, the hap- piness of it is, that .however exquisite the essence it seizes, and attempts to fix an outline to, so that it may have a habitation in the mind, he makes it sensible to feeling as to sight, and as in the relation of Le Comte De Gabalis, some part of the sylpb, if only a fairy foot and ankle, come through the airy veil in beautiful distinctness. Aspen Court. By Shirley Brooks. Stringer & Townsend. THIS, we believe, is the first time that the reading public of America have heard the name of Mr. Brooks. At any rate, this is his first book which is re-printed. It was originally contributed to Bentleys Miscellany, running from number to num- ber, after the usual fashion of serial stories. Then it was copied into Grahams Magazine, published, as all the world knows, in Philadelphia, and made up, bating a small corner which is kept for indifferent articles of home manufacture, la Harper, namely, by conveying, bodily, from foreign sources, all the good papers that the edit6r can happen to find. The story came to an end abruptly in Bentleys, so, of courser it stopped awhile in Graham; but when it came out as. a whole, in the customary three volumes, it was resumed in Graham again, slightly cut down the last half of the third volume being compressed into seven or eight magazine pages. This was hardly justifiable, perhaps, but it was so carefully done, that nobody detected it; in tint, the story was rather the better for it. Old Hesiod says somewhere, ~that the b~lf is more than the whole. This paradox is often true of novels, especially serial ones, like Aspen Court. They are generally so wire-drawn and spun out, that the pruning-knife, nay even the pruning-axe, as Pufi in the Critic, called, it, is the authors best friend. As a whole, Aspen Court is a clever book parts of it are brilliant and telling. The first chapter is excellent, full of sparkling talk and repartee, so are the chap- ters which relate the adventures and misadventures of Mr. Paul Checkerbent, and Angela, the actress; the latter, though, are in the style of Dickens, to whom, by the way, Mr. Brooks dedicates Aspen Court. If the story were a little less in- volved it would give Mr. Brookss readers a better opinion of his constructive pow- ers: at present he has a tendency to melodrama. Buy Aspen Court, however, for you will find it good summer reading. Toiling and Hoping. The Story of a Little Hunchback. By Jenny Marsh. N - York: Derby & Jackson. WHEN our conscience will not permit us to go into ecstasies over the literary merits of a book, we unobtrusively confine ourselves to the binding. The getting up of Toiling and Hoping, is not to be abused. The type is neat, and the cover 30