VISITS AND SKETCHES, at Home and Abroad. By Mrs. Jamieson, author of the "Characteristics of Women," &c. in 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1834.
We intended to notice these interesting volumes sooner, and recommend them to our readers as highly entertaining and instructive. Mrs. Jamieson's style, though not faultless, is very attractive; and certainly as a female writer, she is hardly surpassed in vigor and richness. The _first_ volume is principally devoted to sketches of art, literature and character, comprising _Memoranda_ at Munich, Nuremburg and Dresden. It also contains a vivid account of the celebrated Bess of _Hardwicke_, the _old_ Countess of Shrewsbury,--a visit to _Althorpe_, the ancient seat of the Spencers--and eloquent sketches of the private and dramatic life of _Mrs. Siddons_, and of _Fanny Kemble_. The _second_ volume opens with three interesting stories,--the _False One_, a pathetic oriental tale, a thousand times superior to Vathek,--_Halloran the Pedlar_, and the _Indian Mother_. It also contains a very amusing _drama for little actors_,--and concludes with the _Diary of an Enuyeé_, a performance of much and deserved celebrity. We shall make occasional selections from this work, for the benefit of such of our readers as have no opportunity of seeing the volumes themselves. For the present, we have transferred to our pages the "Indian Mother," a most affecting story founded on a striking incident related by Humboldt. The scene being laid in South America, the reader will be struck with the strong impressions made on Mrs. Jamieson's mind of that magnificent country, through the medium of description alone.
POEMS, by William Cullen Bryant. Boston: Russell, Odiorne & Metcalfe. 1834.
This new and beautiful edition of Mr. Bryant's poems has undergone the author's correction, and contains some pieces which have never before appeared in print. As the elegant china cup from which we sip the fragrant imperial, imparts to it a finer flavor, so the pure white paper and excellent typography of the volume before us, will give a richer lustre to the gems of Mr. Bryant's genius. Not that the value of the diamond is really enhanced by the casket which contains it, but so it is that the majority of mortals are governed by _appearances_; and even a dull tale will appear respectable in the pages of a hot pressed and gilt bound London annual. In justice to Mr. Bryant however, and to ourselves, we will state that our first impressions of his great intellectual power--of his deep and sacred communings with the world of poetry--were derived from a very indifferent edition of his writings, printed with bad type, on a worse paper. Mr. Bryant is well known to the American public as a poet of uncommon strength and genius; and even on the other side of the Atlantic, a son of the distinguished Roscoe, who published a volume of American poetry, pronounced him the first among his equals. Like Halleck, however, and some others of scarcely inferior celebrity,--his muse has languished probably for want of that due encouragement, which to our shame as a nation be it spoken, has never been awarded to that department of native literature. Mr. Bryant, we believe, finding that Parnassus was not so productive a soil as the field of politics, has connected himself with a distinguished partizan newspaper in the city of New York. His bitter regrets at the frowns of an unpoetical public, and yet his unavailing efforts to divorce himself from the ever living and surrounding objects of inspiration are beautifully alluded to in the following lines: