_Blackbeard, or a Page from the Colonial History of Philadelphia_. _Harper & Brothers, New York_. This book differs in many striking points from the ordinary novels of the day. The scene is laid in Philadelphia, and the author is largely indebted for many pictures of manners, things, and opinions in the olden days of the city of Brotherly Love to the "Annals of Philadelphia." We think these volumes will be read with interest in England, but as a mere novel they have very few claims to attention. The style is clumsy and embarrassed. The character of Oxenstiern is a piece of pure folly and exaggeration; while the atrocities of Blackbeard, which are intended to produce a great effect upon the mind of the reader, utterly fail of this end from a want of the _ars celare artem_ in the writer. The book may be characterized in a few words as odd, vulgar, ill-written, and interesting.
_Pencil Sketches or Outlines of Character and Manners_. _Second Series_. _By Miss Leslie_. _Philadelphia, Carey, Lea, & Blanchard_. This volume contains the Wilson-House--the Album--the Reading Parties--the Set of China--Laura Lovel--John W. Robinson, and the Ladies Ball. All these stories have been published before in different periodicals, and have been extensively copied and admired. Miss Leslie's writings have obtained her much reputation, both at home and abroad, and we think very deservedly. She is a lively and _piquante_ sayer of droll and satirical things; and has a way of showing off _à peindre_ the little weak points in our national manners. _The Gift_, an Annual, edited by Miss L. and published by Carey and Lea, will make its appearance in October. It will be splendidly embellished, and in literary matter, cannot fail of equalling any similar publication. Among the contributors will be found Washington Irving, Paulding, Miss Sedgewick, and a host of _stellæ minores_. It will also have the aid of Fanny Kemble's fine _countenance_, and very spirited pen.
_The American Quarterly Review for June_ has articles on National Music--Poetry of the Troubadours--Judge Story's Conflict of Laws--Immunity of Religion--Sigourney's Sketches--Memoir of Tristram Burges--Shirreff's Tour through North America--Fenimore Cooper--French Question--and Pitkin's Statistics. It includes also some Miscellaneous Notices. This is, upon the whole, one of the best numbers of the Quarterly which has been issued for some time. Most of the papers, however, are still liable to the old charge of superficiality. The _Poetry of the Troubadours_ is prettily written, and evinces a noble feeling for the loveliness of song. But it is _feeble_, inasmuch as it exhibits nothing of novelty, none of those lucid and original views, in default of the power to produce which, a writer should forbear to enter upon a subject so hackneyed. We depend upon our reviews for much of our literary reputation abroad, and we have a right therefore, as in a matter touching our national pride, to expect something of energy at their hands. They should build up a reputation of their own, and admit papers on no themes which can be found better treated elsewhere. In the article on _National Music_, among much sensible, and some very profound writing, there are occasional sallies which will not fail to startle many an European _literateur_, and some broad assertions which are very plausible and very unsusceptible of proof. For example. "It may be observed"--says the reviewer--"that, accustomed as we are to separate poetry and music, we must never forget that they were inseparable among the Greeks." This we know is a very general opinion--but, like some other passages in the review, should be swallowed _cum grano salis_. The _Immunity of Religion_ contains some animadversions on a sermon preached at Charleston in 1833, by the Rev. J. Adams, D.D. President of Charleston College. This whole paper is, in our opinion, a series of truisms from beginning to end, and the writer, in gravely deprecating the union of church and state, and the employment of force in matters of religion, forgets that he is insisting upon arguments which not one enlightened person in a million, at the present day, will take the trouble of gainsaying. The review of _Mrs. Sigourney's Sketches_ we really do not like. The harmony--the energy--the fire--the elevated tone of moral feeling--the keen sense of the delicate, the beautiful, and the magnificent, which have obtained for this lady the name of the American Hemans, have not found an echo--so it seems to us--in the unpoetical heart of her reviewer. But, because this is most evidently the case, are we to think of blaming Mrs. Sigourney?