3. Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L. BY LAMAN BLANCHARD. Philadelphia: 1841. Lea and Blanchard. 2 vols. 12mo. So many pleasing associations have long been attached to these "mystic letters," L. E. L., connecting the memory of her whose genius has thus immortalized the shadow of a name with so much that is bright and beautiful, we have dwelt with such delight on her pages, and so deeply mourned her mysterious fate, that it was with no ordinary interest we turned to the record of her life by a biographer of her own selection, in the hope of finding a full and accurate delineation of her mind and character, and a faithful narrative of her eventful history. But in this expectation we have been disappointed; Mr. Blanchard has done but little by his own labors to increase the interest before felt in the very remarkable person who is the subject of his memoir, or add to the amount of information concerning her, of which the public was already in pos session. As it is not our intention here to speak of her merits as a writer, we shall touch only upon a few points in her personal history which are particularly treated of in the volume before us. Mr. Blanchard gives a slight, but rather pleasant sketch of her childhood, from which we learn, that she very early discovered a decided taste for books, as early even as when she learnt to read, and that, as is usual with children, she was not satisfied with reading those only that were permitted and prescribed, but contrived means of access to the sweeter fruits of such as were forbidden, so that she had devoured some hundred and fifty volumes of Cooke's poets and novelists before she grew up. This, no doubt, had great influence in inspiring her with a passion for the distinctions of authorship, which must have shown itself very early, for she could hardly have entered her teens when she ventured upon her first literary effort, a narrative of the adventures of her cousin, Captain Landon, during his absence in America; and but a year or two afterwards she appears as a regular contributor to the "London Literary Gazette." At this period her life becomes literary history, and her biographer's account of her in this respect, is drawn chiefly from her letters and other papers. Touching the peculiar caste of her thoughts and feelings, the principal point upon which he dwells, is the error of the general impression that she must have been "consumed by sickening thoughts," or have experienced "baffled hopes and blighted affec tions," because her harp was generally attuned to sadness. Mr. Blanchard denies that there was any such "heavy weight upon her heart," and accounts for the sadness of her muse by supposing that "she less frequently aimed at expressing, in her poetry, her own actual feelings and opinions, than at assuming a character for the sake of a certain kind of effect, and throwing her thickly-thronging ideas together with the most passionate force, and in the most picturesque forms. Sorrow and suspicion, pining regrets for the past, anguish for the present, and morbid predictions for the future, were in L. E. L. not moral characteristics, but merely literary resources. The wounded spirit, and the worm that never dies, were often terms of art, or means to an end." But in thus supposing that her sadness was feigned for effect, he forgets that trials are our common heritage, of which she must have had her share, and, like other poets, would most probably make use of her peculiar gift as a" vehicle for revelations of the heart." And who that has read the story of her life, will doubt that she had cause for sadness! Her wit and genius, her youth and personal attractions, her affectionate, generous, ingenuous, enthusiastic, independent, and innocent spirit, and, still further, her great popularity as a writer, made her a prominent object for the shafts of jealous calumny, and offered her as a prey to the "spiders of society," "Who weave their petty webs of lies and sneers, Surely it was enough to bring sadness upon any pure-minded woman, and particularly one of her sensitiveness, to be made the victim of envious malevolence, and of the infamous rumors which it had invented and circulated. Happily she had something to sweeten her cup of bitterness; her numerous friends among the wise and good offered her their sympathies, and assured her of their undiminished confidence, which made amends for the world's injustice, and enabled her to endure its censure. Society also continued to extend to her its welcome greeting, thus affording her the most satisfactory evidence that a vindication of herself was unnecessary from slanders originally spread by the malicious, and remembered only by those whose own wickedness ever makes them suspicious of others' virtue. But still, to prove that all these marks of affection and attention were merely palliatives, and not cures, and that the whole vista of her future life must have been permanently darkened by these passing shadows, we need only advert to the fact of her voluntary severance of the tie which bound her to one she loved, in compliance with the "dictates of high-minded feeling, and nice sense of honor, and delicate pride." L. E. L. was a woman of heart, and must have known, when she did violence to her affections, and gave back to her lover his plighted vow, that it would be the wreck of all her earthly happiness, and her subsequent melancholy history proves that it actually was so. In our view it was an unnecessary sacrifice, for which we cannot account; for, supposing her pride to have been a stronger passion than her love, as is often the case in the female heart, it certainly would not have afterwards permitted her to marry a man whom she did not love, if it had required of her to decline marrying one to whom she had been betrothed, and whom she did love. Mr. Blanchard's account of both occurrences leaves them alike unexplained and inexplicable. Equally unsatisfactory is his account of her mysterious death; he gives a full detail of all the circumstances connected with it which the several investigations had brought to light, but they lead to no certain conclusion, and, in fact, from the very nature of the case, none can be expected. The most important results obtained from them are the complete disproval of the opinion first entertained, that her death was caused by her own hand, and a full exoneration of the individuals of her household from the suspicions which had fallen upon them. In the absence of all certainty we can only form conjectures as to the cause of this lamentable event, and we know of none more probable than that loneliness of situation, want of sympathy of female friends, and of her usual domestic comforts, and insalubrity of climate, may together have so reduced her moral and physical strength, as to make her fall an easy victim to the sudden attack of some violent malady, which came on in the night. In one of her poems a fictitious character is made to utter a prediction so singularly applicable to herself, that by the aid of a little superstition it might be regarded as a presentiment of what was to befall her; indeed, the actual prophetic power would not have enabled her to foretell her own sad fate more precisely than it is done in this remarkable passage: "Where my father's bones are lying, Mine shall be a lonelier ending, Where the shout and shriek are blending, Or, perhaps, a fate more lonely 4. Remarks upon Usury, and its Effects. A National Bank a Remedy. In a Letter, etc., by WHITEHOOK. New York: 1841. Harper and Brothers. 12mo. pp. 69. THIS is a business-like, well-written letter, on an important subject, by a practical man, but one obviously more familiar with the details than the principles of currency. His argument is, that USURY, in some form or other, whether that of interest, commission, or premium, on drafts, has been the leading cause of all the derangement and ruin of the country for the last six years; that the banks have been the chief instruments of that injury, and that for this 67 NO. XVIII.-VOL. IX. evil a well-ordered national bank is a remedy. Now, holding this, as we do, to be the all-important question before the country, we would wish, even in this our cursory notice, to set this argument in a somewhat juster light than is here done. Two errors are involved in our author's statement. First, in assigning USURY as the cause of the evil; and, secondly, in regarding a well-ordered national bank but as one among many remedies, instead of the sole remedy for this acknowledged evil. His first error is a logical one. He puts the effect for the cause. High price of money, premium on bills, and all other indications of a deranged currency, which he combines under the name of usury, are obviously in themselves results-the measure of the injury, and not the cause of it; nor can our present evils be corrected, nor future ones avoided, without looking deeper into their origin. Our author's "primal" error is, however, one of language, the vague meaning which he attaches to the term "usury." This much abused erm has obviously three distinct senses, and in all reasoning on it the choice should be made between them, and rigorously held to. There is its "primitive," which is also its "philosophical" meaning, that is, use, or usance of money. This meaning our author gives us in his motto from Shakspeare "He lends out money gratis, and brings down In this sense all payment for money is "usury." The second is its "legal" meaning, "interest beyond the law." This makes it a penal offence, but whether or not an economical injury to the public, (setting aside the breach of law,) depends on the law itself that regulates it being a wise one. The third is its "moral" meaning, “extortion;" exacting from the necessities, or the ignorance of another, a price for the use of money beyond its fair open market price. Now, our author's argument jumbles together these various meanings of the word, and thus leads him to draw conclusions that are often practically false. "Usury," says he, "is the taking for money more than the use of money is worth." But what, we ask, is the measure of that worth? for he denies it to be "what it will bring," that is, its value in market overt. But if this be not its value, "demand," we mean, as compared with "supply," where else shall we seek its measure? It must be, necessarily, then, either in arbitrary law, or in vague individual judgment, what the money is worth in a man's business. The latter is, in truth, what our author argues, but vainly, we think, for what other practical measure of its value can be found than what men willingly pay for it in open competition? If this measure of value be abandoned, then must we come, necessarily, we say, to the only other alternative, usury laws," and penalty upon penalty to enforce them. Now, it is to guard against this deep-rooted, dangerous error, that we are here most anxious lest our author's authority should be urged in favor of what, we doubt not, he is in truth opposed to, the vain attempt to put down usury by penal statutes. The true remedy for these evils, which he too looks to, though, as before said, too vaguely, is a well-ordered national bank, and in this we join with him "heart and hand." 66 This, and this alone, will cure that portion of the multifarious monied evils of our country, which our author huddles up under the general name of " usury," but which, in stricter language, belongs to "the domestic exchanges of the country." We, therefore, should rejoice to see his remedy in operation-" A national bank, with a capital of fifty millions of dollars, with branches in every state in the Union," and we doubt not its prompt efficiency in regulating, as heretofore, all domestic exchanges, and bringing them down to the "minimum" rate admissible by the laws of trade. But here, too, we have a criticism on this point. Of the necessity of some rate" of exchange between distant commercial points, our author is in obvious error. He confounds" exchange" with " rency," and concludes, therefore, that " a uniform currency" involves, necessarily, "equality in the exchanges," and with this view he is for withdrawing from the national bank "the privilege of charging a premium for domestic exchange." But this is obviously absurd, and would but increase the evil it seeks to amend. The evil marked by "premium on bills," when currency is uniform, is overtrading, and the "premium" is its natural check and remedy. But forcibly to cast off this penalty on unwise speculation, would obviously be to encourage it, and thus to do harm instead of good to the sound commerce of the country. cur We commend this view of the question to our author should his work pass to a second edition, and also beg him to moderate his "tirade" against banks in general, or rather so far to qualify it as to show that this abuse of the chartered monied institutions of our country, is but the natural and necessary result of their being left without a NATIONAL REGULATOR. 5. Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters of JOHN TRUMBULL, from 1756 to 1841. New York and London: 1841. Wiley and Putnam. New Haven: B. L. Hamlen. THE autobiography of Colonel Trumbull presents itself to our notice with a strong claim upon our indulgence as a production of venerable age. But that consideration apart, it has great interest as the personal narrative of one, who, by his patriotism, his revolutionary services, his talents as an artist, has acquired a title to the |