policy of the Americans, while holding the enemy in check, to draw him into separate detachments, in successive skirmishes to profit of their superior aim and activity, and of their better knowledge of the country, and to keep up its confidence by a system of short and gradual retreats from fastness to fastness,—from river beyond river." p. 129.—These sentences, taken at hap-hazard from two consecutive leaves, are not unfair specimens of the literary merits of this intrepid attempt to convert the history of the nation, at its most critical period, into a collection of Mémoires pour servir to the biography of General Hamilton.
We are very sure that Mr. Hamilton has undertaken a task for which he has neither the necessary talent nor materials, and which can only end, as it has begun, in a ridiculous failure. If we could hope that our words would reach or influence him, we would entreat him to be content with the proud heritage of fame which his father left to his children, without seeking to increase it by encroachments on that left behind them by his great contemporaries. The fame of Hamilton, indeed, is no peculiar and personal property of his descendants. It belongs to us all, and neither the malice of his enemies nor the foolish fondness of his son can separate it from us. Notwithstanding the amusement we could not help deriving from the perusal of this volume, and sure as we are that the book must grow more and more diverting, in its way, as it goes on, we cannot but feel that the entertainment will be dearly purchased at the cost of even the shadow of just ridicule resting, even for a moment, on so illustrious and venerable a name as that of Alexander Hamilton.
Parthenia: or the Last Days of Paganism. By Eliza Buckminster Lee, Author of "Naomi," "Life of Jean Paul," "Lives of the Buckminsters," etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1858. 12mo. pp. 420.
The true gauge of any civilization, whether of a race, a nation, or a district, is to be found in the character and position of its women. Slaves, toys, idols, companions, they rise with every ascending grade of culture until they have won the natural place so long denied them. The feminine string rings a true octave with the masculine, and makes a perfect concord, when left to vibrate in its entire length. But the lower forms of social humanity are constantly shortening it, and so producing occasional harmonies at the expense of frequent discords.
We hold such a book as "Parthenia" to have a wide significance to all who read thoughtfully. It is the work of a thoroughly cultivated woman, who, in her nobleness of aim, in her generosity of sentiment, in her purity of thought and style, may be considered a worthy representative of our best type of educated womanhood. Mrs. Lee's former writings have made her name honored and cherished in both hemispheres. Thomas Carlyle said of her "Lives of the Buckminsters," "that it gave an insight into the real life of the highest natures,"—"that it had given him a much better account of character in New England than anything he had seen since Franklin."
We hail a production like this, so scholarlike and serene, so remote from the trivialities and vulgarities of ambitious book-makers, with pleasure and pride. We are thankful—let us add in a whisper—for a story, with love and woman in it, which does not rustle with crinoline; that most useful of inventions for ladies with limited outlines, and literary man-milliners with scanty brains; which has filled more than half the space in our drawing-rooms, and nearly as large a part of some of our periodicals, since the Goddesses of Grace and of Dulness united to bestow the precious gift on Beauties and Bœotians.
A story deals with human nature and time. All that is truly human is interesting, however abstractly stated; but it requires the mordant of specific circumstance, involving some historical period, to make it stain permanently. Everything that belongs to Time, as his private property,—everything temporary, using that word in its ordinary sense,—is uninteresting, except so far as it serves to fix the colors of that humanity which we always love to contemplate. The statuary, who cares nothing about Time, loves to drop his costuming trumpery altogether. The cheap story, written for the day, is dressed in all the fashionable articles that
