The History the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. To which is added, an Historical View of the Affairs of Ireland. By Edward, Earl of Clarendon. First and Second Volumes. Boston. Wells & Lilly.

The Acting American Theatre. No. XIII. containing Pizarro, a Tragedy in Five Acts. Philadelphia.

Lingard's History of England. Vol. III. Philadelphia. E. Cummiskey. Practice of the Court of King's Bench in Personal Actions and Ejectment. By John T. Archbold, Esq. Second American, from the Second London Edition. 2 vols. 8vo.

WORKS IN PRESS.

C. EWER and T. H. CARTER have in press, and will soon publish TODD'S JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, as abridged by Chalmers, and Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, united; to which is added, Walker's Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek, Latin, and Scripture Proper Names. Edited by J. E. WORCESTER.

This Dictionary will comprise Walker's introductory treatise on the "Principles of English Pronunciation entire, and all his Remarks on the pronunciation of individual words.

In Chalmers' Abridgment, the many thousand words added by Mr. Todd are not distinguished from those given in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary; but in the work now printing, the words added by Todd are all carefully discriminated; and the pronunciation of these also, is marked according to Walker's Principles.

Printing at the University Press, in Cambridge,

MATINS AND VESPERS; with HYMNS and OCCASIONAL DEVOTIONAL PIECES. BY JOHN BOWRING. First American, from the Second London Edition. 18mo. pp. 251.

The Second English Edition of this little book was published in 1824, and, considering its intrinsic excellence and the numerous class of persons likely to be interested and benefited by such a work, it is somewhat surprising that it has not yet been republished in this country.

The pieces entitled Matins and Vespers," fifty-six in number, are adapted to the morning and evening of each day in the week, for four weeks, one in each of the four seasons of the year; and the tone of feeling and the imagery are varied accordingly. These, as well as the "Hymus and other Devotional Pieces," which form the rest of the volume, are partly original, and partly translations and imitations.

It is not extravagant to say, that so much good Devotional Poetry, for private reading, is hardly to be found in any other single volume in the language; and though the different pieces have various degrees of poetical merit, they are nearly all free from those positive offences against good taste, which are so apt to abound in this class of compositions.

Published every month, for the Proprietors, by BowLES & DEARBORN, at the Office of the United States Review and Literary Gazette, No. 72, Washington Street, Boston, and by G. & C. CARVILL, No. 108, Broadway, New York, Terms, five dollars per annum.

Cambridge: Printed at the University Press, by Hilliard, Metcalf, & Co.

The Novels of CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN; "Wieland," "Arthur Mervyn," "Ormond," "Edgar Huntly," "Jane Talbot," and " Clara Howard." With a Memoir of the Author. Boston. S. G. Goodrich. 1827. 6 vols. 12mo.

TWENTY Odd years have been allowed to pass before even an imperfect edition of the works of fiction of our long unrivalled novelist is given to the public. Yet nearly the whole of that time Brown has been alone; for no one approached the height he rested on, till the author of the "Pioneers" and "Pilot" appeared. Like his own Clithero, he lay stretched in moody solitude, the waters of the noisy world rolling blindly on around him, and a wide chasm open between him and his fellow men. In 1815, Mr. Dunlap gave us a life of him; an ill arranged and bulky work, yet too meagre where it should be particular and full. To this, however, we are indebted for all we know of Brown's life; and we owe to it also an article on Brown, which appeared in the North American Review for 1819; an article which, we fear, has left us little to say.

Mr. Dunlap's Life of our author was not of a character to be much read; and it was, after all, perhaps, in this case, as it has been in some others, chiefly to England that Brown was indebted for his coming into general notice at home. It is true that his stories were to be found amongst the shabby editions of works which go to make up a circulating library, and that some of them were occasionally read; but excepting his personal acquaintance, few or none knew or cared whether he was an Englishman or a Laplander; whether he was living, whether he had died a natural

death, or was one of the many Browns who are regularly hanged. Even when an American edition at last appears, it is recommended to public notice by extracts from a London paper, congratulating Brown's countrymen that Boston was to give them an edition of the works of a man of whom they might well be proud. We hope we are giving no offence. We would merely suggest to the zealous, that whenever a man of genius appears amongst us, we should give him cordial welcome and support, and hearty praise; and not be so wanting in patriotism as to let foreigners be the first to take him by the hand.

This edition of Brown is in six conveniently sized volumes, very neat in appearance, though not quite so accurately printed as we could have wished. The notice of him, at the beginning, gives not a single new fact, or peculiarity in his character, that we recollect. The publisher might as well have set his printer to compiling a notice out of Dunlap, as have brought such an one as this all the way from Philadelphia. We wish, too, he had taken advice before making his selection. No edition of Brown's works should be published without the Memoirs of Carwin, and those of Stephen Calvert. It is true, Brown did not live to finish them; but to those who feel something like a personal attachment to our author,—and what good man ever reads him without feeling it?— this gives them a near and peculiar interest; it connects us with him in his sickness, it brings us to the side of his deathbed, and helps us to watch in spirit the passing of his exalted and solemn soul into the other world. Had any sacrifice been necessary, which we very much doubt, “ Clara Howard " should have been omitted, for it has all Brown's defects, with little or none of his power. Notwithstanding these deficiencies, we hold the public to be under great obligations to the publisher; and hope he will be fully rewarded for his praiseworthy undertaking.

To the speculative mind, it is a curious fact that a man like Brown should of a sudden make his appearance in a new country, in which almost every individual was taken up in the eager pursuit of riches, or the hot and noisy contests of party politics; when every man of talent, who sought out distinction, went into one of the professions; when to make literature one's main employment, was held little better than being a drone; when almost the only men who wrote with force and simplicity were some of the leaders amongst our active politicians; when a man might look over our wide and busy territory, and see only here and there some self-deluded being dabbling in a dull, shallow stream, which he fancied running clear and strong to the brim with the waters of Helicon.

Did not the fact that Brown produced such works at such a time show clearly the power of genius over circumstances, we might be inclined to attribute to his loneliness of situation something of the solitariness, mysteriousness, and gloom, which surround all he wrote. But these come not of outward things. The energies of his soul were melancholy powers, and their path lay along the dusky dwelling-places of superstition, and fear, and death, and woe. The soul of such a man takes not its character from the world, but takes out from the world what suits its nature and passes the rest by; and what more it needs, and what it cannot find abroad, it turns for inward, and finds or creates it there. "My existence," says Brown, "is a series of thoughts, rather than of motions. Ratiocination and deduction leave my senses unemployed. The fulness of my fancy renders my eye vacant and inactive. Sensations do not precede and suggest, but follow and are secondary to the acts of my mind." So strong was this cast of his mind, and so single was it in its purpose, that of all men of imagination we know of none who appear from their writings to have looked so little at nature, or to have been so little open to its influences. With the exception of Mervyn's return to Hadwin's, and his last journey thence, and the opening of Carwin, with one or two more slight instances, he seldom attempts a description of natural scenery, or, where he labors it most, is confused and indistinct, as, for instance, in Edgar Huntly. It is amidst shut-up houses, still, deserted streets, noisome smells, and pestilence, and death, and near the slow, black hearse, and the dead man's grave, that his calling lies; and he has no time to turn aside to breathe the fresh, clear air of the country. He seems, in fiction, as intent upon his purpose as Howard ever was in real life; he who could spare no time from hospitals and prisons, for palaces and statues and pictures. This may be thought a serious deficiency in Brown's genius; yet it is curious to see how sometimes a defect takes somewhat the appearance of an advantage. This very want of variety has given such an air of truth to what he is about, showing such an earnest singleness of purpose, that perhaps no writer ever made his readers so completely forget that they were not reading a statement of some serious matter of fact; and so strong is this impression, that we even become half reconciled to improbabilities, which so vex us in fiction, though often happening in daily life. This enables us to bear, too, better with his style; for, along with something like a conviction that the man who had vivacity of genius enough for such inventions, could never have delivered himself

with such dull poverty and pedantry of phrase, we at last are almost driven to the conclusion that however extraordinary it may be, it is nevertheless a fact; for the man "never could have made it," and that things must have happened pretty much as he tells us they did.

If Brown was remarkable for having appeared amongst a people whose pursuits and tastes had, at the time, little or no sympathy with his own, and in a country in which all was new, and partook of the alacrity of hope, and where no old remembrances made the mind contemplative and sad, nor old superstitions conjured up forms of undefined awe; he is scarcely less striking for standing apart, in the character of his mind, from almost every other man of high genius. He is more like Godwin than like any other; but differs from him in making so many of his characters live, and act, and perish, as if they were the slaves of supernatural powers, and the victims of a vague and dreadful fatality. Even here his character for truth is maintained; and his invisible agencies mingle with the commonest characters, and in the most ordinary scenes of life. It is true that these mysterious agencies are all explained away; yet such a hold do they take upon our minds, that we cannot shake off the mystical influence they have gained over us; and even those who have practised the deceptions, seem to have done it not so much from a love of deception as from a hankering after something resembling the supernatural, and an insane sort of delight in watching its strange and dreadful force over others; both he that is wrought upon, and he that works, seem, the one to suffer and the other to act, as under some resistless fate. Brown's fatal power is unsparing, and never stops; his griefs and sufferings are not of that kind which draws tears and softens the heart; it wears out the heart and takes away the strength of our spirits, so that we lie helpless under it. A power of this kind holds no associations with nature; for in the gloomiest, and the wildest, and barrenest scenes of nature, there is something enlarging, and elevating, something that tells us there is an end to our unmixed sorrow, something that lifts us above life, and breathes into us immortality -God is there! No! it is surrounded by man and the works of man-man in his ills, and sins, and feebleness; it is there alone that we can feel what is the bitterness and weariness of unmixed helplessness and woe.

So much was gloominess the character of Brown's genius, that he does not, like other authors, begin his story in a state of cheerfulness or quiet, and gradually lead on to disappointment and