[“Harper” for July has been]
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“HARPER”1 FOR JULY has been received. It is a capital number, with enough of spicy variety in it to satisfy all tastes. It opens with an illustrated article on “Marion”; then comes a “Journey through the Land of the Aztecs”; then another illustrated paper on “Caracus”; then come stories, light sparking and vivacious—the very thing for summer reading. Thackeray’s2 “Virginians” is continued, and loses none of its charms as it proceeds toward the close. The Editor’s Table discusses a question which is just now greatly agitated among us, namely: “The Observance of the Sabbath” with ability and candor. It takes, of course, the religious and conservative ground. The editor says in conclusion: “The unbelieving and dissolute may scoff and the sophistical may plead for the privilege of turning liberty into licentiousness; but let us remember that the profanation of the Sabbath is the materialization of the people; that a people materialized are a people destroyed.” The Editor’s easy Chair, which, to our thinking, is the most pleasing feature of this popular magazine, discusses in its usual tone of amusing gossip the coming Fourth, the past anniversaries, Thackeray’s manner of depicting the character of Washington, and the like class of topics. The comic illustrations to the present number are very funny and [cut away]
Notes:
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2. William Thackeray (1811–1863) was an English satirical author and illustrator. Whitman summarized his assessment of Thackery when asked by Horace Traubel late in life as follows: "I have read Vanity Fair and liked it: it seemed to me a considerable story of its kind—to have its own peculiar value. But Thackeray as a whole did not cast his sinker very deep though he's none the worse for that" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, Monday, October 29, 1888). [back]