'Therefore with angels and arch-angels, laud And magnify HIS great and glorious Name, Who, to redeem the world from ruin, came, Saying: Holy, holy, holy LORD GOD! Heaven and earth made clean by Thy dear blood, Are ever full of THY great majesty: All glory be to THEE, O LORD, Most High!' So sang the angelic choir, the while I stood Listening the far response: 'Not unto us, Not unto us, O LORD! but unto THEE Be all the glory, LAMB OF CALVARY! _Quoniam tu solus Dominius!_' So Love doth rule--the high behest of heaven: And Love is ten-fold Love that waits on sins forgiven.
THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS. From the French of EDMOND ABOUT, Author of 'The Roman Question,' 'Germaine,' etc. By MARY L. BOOTH. With an Introduction by EPES SARGENT, Esq. In one volume: pp. 300. Boston: J. E. TILTON AND COMPANY, Number 601 Washington-street.
MONSIEUR ABOUT is said to have scared HIS HOLINESS, the POPE, the kind and benevolent PIO NONO, (if we may trust _any_ of all the numerous portraits and drawings which we have encountered of him,) in his book upon '_The Roman Question_.' The author's very name may have had something to do with it. He was 'about'--he was 'areöund': and the 'French' of his cognomen, as pronounced by his countrymen, was in itself suggestive of at least a signal of alarm--'_Ah-booh!_' But this aside: the book is a remarkable one, in many respects: and like its predecessors from the same pen, it will make an 'abiding mark' among the artistically-transferred literature to our own, from a foreign tongue. This narrative of '_The King of the Mountains_' is not at all complicated. Regarded as an artistical picture, we may say with truth that 'the canvas is neither confused nor crowded.' The story is supposed to be told by a young German botanist. He proceeds to Greece with the purpose of herbalizing in the mountains. 'Carried away by a scientific enthusiasm--the most common and the most pardonable--he becomes the prisoner of a remarkable brigand, HADGI-STAVROS, the King of the Mountains. He is not alone in his captivity. An English lady and her daughter--the former a striking portrait of a class of weak and consequential tourists, and the latter a thing to be admired and loved by any German, or any American, for that matter, under the circumstances supposed--are the hero's fellow-prisoners. The greater part of the book is taken up with a description of the character, positions, resources, habits and influence of the brigand chief; the temporary captivity of the party, who are made prisoners for the sake of a large ransom, actually in view of Athens, (such is the state of the government and police of that thriving kingdom!) and their final ransom and escape. But there are other _dramatis personæ_ beside MRS. SIMONS, who is a sort of MRS. NICKLEBY, an _Anglaise pour ire_, and MISS SIMONS, who does not take after her mother. There are down at the Piræus an American named HARRIS, a young Athenian girl, hight PHOTINI, and a Frenchman whose ruling passions are archæology and philanthropy. 'He had been rewarded by some provincial academy for an essay on the price of paper in the time of ORPHEUS. Encouraged by his first success, he had made a journey to Greece to collect materials for a work on the quantity of oil consumed by the lamp of DEMOSTHENES while he was writing the second Philippic.' HARRIS, the American, is evidently a favorite character with M. ABOUT. He invests him with all the best attributes of our countrymen, and makes every adventure in which he is a participator honorable to his gallantry and sagacity: 'The first time I dined with this strange fellow I comprehended America. JOHN was born at Vandalia, Illinois. He inhaled at his birth that air of the New World, so vivacious, so sparkling and so brisk, that it goes to the head like champagne wine, and one gets intoxicated in breathing it. I know not whether the HARRIS family are rich or poor; whether they sent their son to college or left him to get his own education. It is certain that at twenty-seven years he depends only on himself; trusts only to himself, is astonished at nothing, thinks nothing impossible, never flinches, believes all things, hopes all things, tries all things; triumphs in all, rises up again if he falls, never stops, never loses courage.' One of the best of our American critics, Mr. BRYANT, remarks of this book: 'No work of modern times, even in an English dress, serves to convey so capital an idea of the style which made VOLTAIRE famous, as this last agreeable romance of the author of 'The Roman Question.' It is just such a story as TALLEYRAND would have told over his chocolate, and SYDNEY SMITH relished and decorated with impromptu comment.'