you

whole, though a woman, is to us the most pleasing and the most inspiring of the modern authors of popular French literature. She has great purity of feeling, great depth and delicacy of sentiment, and rare beauty and strength of expression. If she exposes vice, or the defects of existing domestic or social arrangements, it is never in mere wantonness. You feel always that are reading the utterances of an earnest spirit, always and everywhere aspiring to something better. You feel the unrest in which she is, and from which she tries to escape, and you honor her as a brave and struggling spirit, who would be better, do better, and make the world better, all men and women happier and lovelier, if she could. But you feel all the while, that she is out of health, that the tone of her feelings is diseased; and you are unable to rise from the perusal of one of her works, cheered and invigorated for the combat of life. O sing us, my dear lady, a livelier strain; do not oppress us ever with that monotonous wail of the soul, seeking in vain to solve the problem of its own destiny. Enough of those melancholy notes. Sing us a song of gladness; if you cannot, sing us a bold war song, and send us forth ready to do valiant battle against the enemies of our peace and virtue.

Spiridion, the work named at the head of this article, is properly a religious work, written with the same purpose that we had in writing Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted. It details the experience of an ingenuous mind, in its progress through the several stages of doubt, unbelief, to absolute infidelity, and from that depth of horror and desolation, up to something like faith in God and immortality. The conclusion to which she arrives, the solution she offers of the enigma of existence, is worthy of study, as marking the tendency of religious speculation among the popular writers in France, and more especially as showing the growing influence of the doctrines of l'Ecole de Saint-Simonienne. We intended to notice this solution at length; but we have left ourselves no room. We, however, recommend the book to all who are capa

ble of appreciating fine writing, of sympathizing with free thought, and liberal feeling. We consider it a very remarkable book, a book not without a deep significance. It is worthy of a place in Mr. Ripley's series of Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature. We have never read a book on religious subjects, that contained so many passages, which seemed to be perfect transcripts from our own experience.

EDITOR.

ART. VI. LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

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Twice-Told Tales. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Boston: James Munroe and Co. 1842. 2 vols. 16mo. These volumes are not introduced for the purpose of being criticised, for their author, in his own department, is one of those very few men, born to give law to criticism, not to receive the law from it; nor are they introduced for the sake of being commended to the public, for they are already well known; and no lover of American literature can be presumed to be ignorant of them. We notice them simply, to tell the author that these Tales, excellent as they are, are not precisely what he owes to his country. In them he has done much, and shown us that /he can do more. He is a genuine artist. His mind is creative; more so than that of any other American writer that has yet appeared, with the exception, perhaps, of Washington Irving. He has wit, humor, pathos, in abundance; an eye for all that is wild, beautiful, or picturesque in nature; a generous sympathy with all forms of life, thought, and feeling, and warm, deep, unfailing love of his race. He has withal a vigorous intellect, and a serene and healthy spirit. He is gentle, but robust and manly; full of tenderness, but never maudlin. Through all his writings there runs a pure and living stream of manly thought and feeling, which characterizes always the true man, the Christian, the republican, and the patriot. He may be, if he tries, with several improvements, to the literature of his country, all that Boz is to that of England. He possesses a higher order of intellect and genius than Boz, stronger, and purer. He has more earnestness. The creator of "The gentle Boy" compares advantageously with the creator of "Little Nell." The Gentle Boy is indeed but a sketch; yet a sketch that betrays in every stroke the hand of the master; and we think, it required a much higher order of genius to conceive it, so gentle, so sweet, so calm, so full of life, of love,

than it did to conceive the character of Little Nell, confessedly the most beautiful of Dickens's creations.

But we have no room for remarks. We have wished merely to enrol ourselves among those, who regard Mr. Hawthorne as fitted to stand at the head of American Literature. We see the pledge of this in his modesty, in his simplicity, and in his sympathy with all that is young, fresh, childlike; and above all in his originality, and pure, deep feeling of nationality. We pray him to remember that, while we approve his love of children, and admire much the books he has sent out for them, we do not forget that he is capable of writing for men, for all ages; and we ask him to attempt a higher and a bolder strain than he has thus far done. To those, if such there are, who have not read these Twice-Told Tales, we recommend them as being two as pleasant volumes to read, as pure and as healthy in their influence, as any two that can be found in the compass of our literature.

The Ideal Man. A conversation between Two Friends, upon the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, as manifested in actual Life. By a Philokalist. Boston: E. P. Peabody. 1842. 12mo. pp. 160. — The title of this book is long and unpromising; the pages also are broad, and have a heavy and forbidding look; there is nothing in the style or matter that suddenly arrests the attention of him who is listlessly turning over its leaves; and almost every one will be disposed, after a hasty glance, to throw it down, with the feeling that, though it may be a very good book, it must be also a very dull one. And yet this judgment would be altogether wrong. We have found the book quite readable, and have been favorably impressed with the author's goodness of heart, seriousness of purpose, and general literary ability. We will not claim for the book uncommon brilliancy, or great originality, but we have noted several of its passages which are very felicitous, striking as to thought, and beautiful in manner. When we consider that the author is a foreigner, and writing in a foreign tongue, we are struck with the general purity, freedom, and flexibility of his language. The author is an exile in this country, from his home, his native land, the unhappy Poland. We hope our countrymen will make him regret his exile as little as possible. He has decidedly a literary turn of mind, a free spirit, and a warm heart; and they will find themselves well repaid for encouraging his literary enterprises.

Psychology, or Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy, on the basis of Consciousness and Common Sense. Designed for Colleges and Academies. By S. S. SCHMUCKER, D. D., Professor of Christian Theology, in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, (Pa). New-York: Harper & Brothers, 1842. 12mo. pp. 227.- We have only this moment received this volume, and have had time barely to glance at some few of its pages. We have, however, read enough in it to satisfy ourselves that, notwithstanding it issues from the

press of the Messrs. Harper, it has very considerable merits. The author has evidently bestowed much time and pains in the investigation of metaphysical subjects, and not altogether without success. What important discoveries he has made, which entitle him to call his system "new," we have not yet ascertained; but we like his general classification of the mental phenomena. He rejects the usual classification of English philosophy, modifies that of the German, and virtually accepts, without acknowledgment, that of Cousin. He divides the mental phenomena into 1. Cognitive Ideas; 2. Sentient Ideas; 3. Active Operations. Cousin's classification is, 1. Sensations; 2. Cognitions; 3. Actions, voluntary and spontaneThe two classifications are, then, virtually the same.

ous.

Mr. Schmucker bases his classification on the operations of the mind, not on the faculties or powers of the mind, because, as he says, we know nothing of mind in itself. But we know mind, so far as it enters into its phenomena. If among these phenomena we find cognitions, we have a right to affirm that the mind has the power or faculty of knowing; if we find sensations, or "sentient ideas," we have a right to infer that the soul has the power or faculty to feel; and so on. In strictness, we believe it more scientific to found the classification on the powers or faculties of the soul, than on the observable differences of the phenomena themselves. However, this is a slight matter. In the next place, Mr. Schmucker deserves praise for enlarging the third division, so as to embrace the whole activity of the soul. The Germans include in this division only volitions; but volitions are merely those of our actions which are performed with consciousness; but I act just as much when I raise my arm unconsciously, as when I raise it consciously.

But we must object to the author, that he calls our mental phenomena ideas, in the sense in which Locke uses the term, thus laying again the foundation for the theory which Reid spent so much time in overthrowing. The mind is immediately conversant, not with certain ideas or mental representations of objects, but with the objects themselves. What Mr. Schmucker means by ideas is best expressed by the word notion; and is termed by Cousin very properly the form of the thought. In consequence of his view of ideas, the author is unable to get from the subjective world to the objective. He really can make out scientifically the existence of no world besides my own internal world. He himself virtually admits this. We converse not, he says, with objective entities themselves, but with certain ideas or mental representations of them. These mental representations are, then, all that we can know. How will he show that there must needs be an objective reality, or entity, to answer to this mental representation? He nowhere shows, so far as we have seen, what we conceive to be the great discovery of modern metaphysics, that this mental representation, as he calls it, is merely the relation of the thinker and the object thought in the fact of consciousness, and is the notion which the mind forms, in the act of thinking, of the subject and object, and can never be formed, save when both subject and object are taken into view by the subject thinking.

Moreover, Mr. Schmucker, in making this classification which he does of the mental phenomena, appears to us to forget, that there are in real life no pure cognitions, no pure sentient ideas, no pure active operations. The mind is a unity, and manifests itself always as a unity; but as a unity existing in triplicity. Every phenomenon of the soul is cognition, and sentiment, and action at once. This analysis which we make is fatal to all true philosophy. We must take thought, not as analysed, but in its primitive synthesis, as the basis of our systems. We remark also, that the author is very far from perceiving the precise nature of what is termed consciousness, and is somewhat misled by the Scottish School, which has treated consciousness, of which it makes great use, not with rare sagacity. We refer, the reader for our view of it, to the first article in the present number.

Several more criticisms we could offer on even the few pages we have read, but we forbear. While we are far from believing that the work merits to be regarded as a standard work for schools and colleges, we think it still worthy of being studied. The author is a man of ability, of a free mind, and of an earnest purpose; and he writes with great ease and perspicuity. This style, bating his termninology, is very suitable to a work of this kind. Upon the whole, we are gratified to meet with the work, if for no other reason, at least as indicating a growing interest in metaphysical subjects.

Psychology, or a View of the Human Soul: including Anthropology. Adapted for the use of colleges. By the Rev. FREDERICK A. RAUCH, D.D., late President of Marshall College, Penn. Second edition, revised and improved. New-York: M. W. Dodd; Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1841. The first edition of this work did not meet our eye, and we knew not of the existence of such a work, till the appearance of this second edition. It is by a very worthy German, now no more, who was obliged to leave his own country, in consequence of entertaining liberal political opinions. It is a work of more than ordinary pretension, and of even more than ordinary merit. It is much superior in learning, ability, and the justness of its views, to the work of Mr. Schmucker. As we intend to return to it soon, and to give it an elaborate examination, we content ourselves now with merely commending it to our readers, as one of the very best philosophical works ever published in the country, and one which, if it does not always teach the truth, rarely, if ever, teaches falsehood. The author is, from beginning to end, on the very verge of discovering the basis of what we regard as the true system of philosophy for our epoch. His style is diffuse, but his expression is hearty, and rarely inelegant, and often very beautiful. His general method of handling his subject is worthy of praise, and very remarkable in a German.

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Lectures to Ladies, on Anatomy and Physiology. By Mrs. MARY S. GOVE. Boston: Saxton & Pierce. 1842. 16mo. 300.-The only fault we have to find with this book is with the title, that it reads Lectures to Ladies, instead of Lectures to Women. Woman is a better and a higher term than Lady. Ladies are sometimes very weak and disagreeable. Women are always deserving of honor and respect from