New Publications
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NEW PUBLICATIONS.
HARPER AND BROTHERS have sent us the "Cyclopedia of Commerce and Navigation," edited by J. Smith Homans1 and J. Smith Homans Jun. It is a splendid royal octavo with double columns, strongly bound in muslin, and is cheap at the price, $6. Of its literary execution we must condense what we have to say into a smal space compared with what the merits of the work deman. Its design is to furnish the merchant, the navigator, the manufacturer, and intelligent readers, in fact, of every class, with an authentic compendium of the newest and most complete information on all the relations of commerce and trade. In it will be found articles upon the trade of every maritime country and city in the world; copious and reliable statistics upon the staple productions of every climate; essays upon the commercial subjects; synopsis of the laws regulating commerce, and all matters of the kind necessary to a manual of reference of the kind.
That there has long been a want of a comprehensive work of a similar character cannot be doubted. It was necessary, to, to present us not merely with a compilation, but that we should have a work especially exhibiting the condition and resources of the United States and separate States, as well as of foreign nations. Some five and twenty years ago a reprint was made of teh work of McCulloch2 on the same subject, but it was very imperfect as regards the statistics of our own country, besides which the many changes that have occurred during the past ten years in commercial affairs, the increase in our commerce—almost unexampled as it has been—and the developement of our immense industrial resources, plainly demanded that a new record should be made which would place before us at a glance a view of what had been accomplished in that time. This desideratum the volume before us seems well calculated to fill. We might specially refer the reader to the very full and elaborate articles on Gold, Cotton, Flour, Corn, Rice, Tobacco and other great staples of national industry. These, as was right and proper, are most full, complete and satisfactory.
In preparing this Cyclopedia, the authors have drawn upon the most authentic sources, and, if we may trust to the well-known reputation of the Messrs. Homans as statisticians, the best that could be applied to. Among the most valuable features which they have introduced may be mentioned in this connection the more than ordinarily full tabular views in different branches of statistics. These are among the most important of the labors of the careful and industrious authors in their speciality.
No counting-house or office should be without this Commercial Cyclopedia. The advantages of an elaborate manual of this character will be very soon felt and appreciated, and we have no doubt that the book is already estimated at its proper value. With these remarks we take leave of the Messrs. Homans' very complete and valuable work.
AMONG OTHER volumes that have been waiting their turn to be noticed, we find on our table a volume of "Select Discourses from the French and German" including sermons by Krumacher, Monod, Tholuck, and Muller.3 To the Christian reader they will be found to be replete with interest. Dr. Monod's sermon on the "Temptation of Christ" is one of the most chaste and beautiful extant, and in its English dress reads quite as well as in the original. The writings of Krumacher are too well know in this country where his "Parables" and several of his other works may be found in the libraries of nearly every religious family, to need special mention here.
HENRY LYON, of 548 Broadway, sends us "A Lady's Journal of the Siege of Lucknow." It is a graphic and peculiarly feminine account of the horrors endured by brave men, delicate ladies and innocent children, during the terrible Sepoy Rebellion. There is no better observer than a woman, and no better diary writer. This little work will be found highly interesting and affecting.
AT THIS late day it is almost supererogatory to do more than refer to the "Life Thoughts" of our Brooklyn Boanerges, Henry Ward Beecher.4 It is from the press of Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston, and is handsomely gotten up. Of its contents, those who have once heard Mr. Beecher, (and who has not?) may easily guess the character. The "Thoughts" are neither more nor less than sparkling gems gathered up with religious care as they fell from his lips, by the compiler of the volume, Miss Edna Dean Proctor.5 There is hardly a page in the volume that does not contain some striking image, some happy allusion, some quiet bit of pathos, or some pungent piece of satire. A capital book for Summer reader is the "Life Thoughts," and it well deserves its large sale.
A SOMEWHAT puzzling affair to us is a novel christened "George Melville," and said to be from the pen of another Brooklynite, Mr. C. Hatch Smith,6 and published by W. R. C. Clark of 346 Broadway. It seems to us most remarkably weak, silly and disjointed, even for these days when the devoted and long-suffering public is absolutely pelted and belabored with trashy fiction. The music which accompanies it is better. The author, we should judge, is a very tolerable musician, but not by any means a second Bulwer7 or Thackeray.8
WE HAVE received from Fowler and Wells,9 No. 308 Broadway, a prettily bound little volume entitled "The Farm." It is a pocket manual of practical agriculture and seems calculated to be extremely useful. To the readers of "The Garden" it is necessary only to say that this excellent little farm-book is by the same author, and is fully equal in value to that popular manual. It treats in a clear, concise, and matter-of-fact way of both the theory and the practice of agriculture. No farmer, and especially no young farmer, can well afford to be without it. So much valuable information for so little money we venture to say can be found nowhere else.
Notes:
1. J. Smith Homans was the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce for the city of New York and editor of the Banker's Magazine. [back]
2. John Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864) was a Scottish economist and writer. [back]
3. Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher (1796–1868) was a religious leader. [back]
4. Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was a minister and social reformer who used his position in the church to advocate for anti-slavery. He is the brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. [back]
5. Edna Dean Proctor (1829–1923) was an American writer and poet. [back]
6. Charles Hatch Smith was an American writer and author of George Melville: An American Novel. [back]
7. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), was an English writer and politician. His novel The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849) was a breakout hit at the time. Whitman once accused Lytton of plagiarizing a book titled Zicci, stating it was the exact same as the novel Zanoni. Both novels, however, were written by Lytton. Whitman described the controversy in a number of Aurora editorials. See "The Great Bamboozle!—A Plot Discovered!" (March 28, 1842), and "More Humbug" (April 4, 1842). [back]
8. 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]
9. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811–1896) and his brother-in-law Samuel R. Wells (1809–1887) were practitioners of phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the nineteenth century. They owned and operated the Phrenological Depot on Broadway, which contained phrenological materials and books and offered phrenological readings. They also operated a printing business and were responsible for printing the expanded second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856). In addition, they published Life Illustrated, The American Phrenological Journal, and The Water Cure Journal. Whitman contributed to both Life Illustrated and The Phrenological Journal. [back]