New Books
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NEW BOOKS.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, as Viewed by the Light of Republican Institutions. By Rev. John S. C. Abbott. New York: Harper and Brothers. 8vos. pp. 489.
This is not the first of Mr. Abbott's appearances before the reading public. He has before written on French topics, and though in the days when it was the fashion to denominate Louis Napoleon1 a tyrant, and to regard him as a fool at that, Mr. Abbott was sometime censured by more intemperate and less discriminating people for drawing too flattering portraitures of his imperial subject; yet now, when the French Emperor receives the plaudits of nearly every organ of public opinion, that tendency in Mr. Abbott's works which then was counted a blemish, will now constitute rather a recommendation of his production to the reading public. The present work was greatly needed. None but a Republican, sincerely attached to free institutions, could have done discriminating justice to the French Revolution and its causes. It needed an author like Mr. Abbott, who fully recognises the excellence of popular institutions while refusing sympathy to popular excesses, to embody the opinion of the American community on the tragic scenes of the Revolution of 1789 and the causes by which it was precipitated. Mr. Abbot's merit is not only that he recites facts with a care and accuracy, lucidity and perspicuity of style and arrangement, most creditable to him as a historian; but that he draws the true moral from the events he narrates--not only takes the reader over the surface, but beneath it, exhibiting to him the secret springs and causes; and onward, displaying to gaze the results and consequences of the actions he portrays. His theory cannot be better explained than in his own words;
"There is often an impression that the Revolution was a sudden outbreak of blind, unthinking passion—a tempest bursting from a serene sky; or, like a battle in the night, masses rushing blindly in all directions, and friends and foes in confusion and frenzy amiting each other. But, on the contrary, the Revolution was of slow growth—a storm which had been for centuries accumulating. The gathering of the clouds, the gleam of its embosomed fires, and the roar of its approaching thunders, arrested the attention of the observing long before the storm in all its fury burst upon France.
"One simple moral this whole tragedy teaches. It is, that the laws must be so just as to command the assent of every enlightened Christian mind, and the masses of the people must be trained to such intelligence and virtue as to be able to appreciate good laws, and to have the disposition to maintain them. Here lies the only hope of the Republic."
The book is illustrated with one hundred engravings from the artistic pencil of Mr. C. E. Doepler, who went to Paris that he might with more historical accuracy delineate both costumes and localities. Mr. Abbot himself is also perfectly familiar with the places he described, and has collected his information from the localities of the scenes themselves. Messrs. Harper have done justice to a work of such interest and merit, but the style of the volume's getting up; and its exterior will be as ornamental to a library, as its contents edifying to the reader himself.
WALTER THORNLEY, OR, A PEEP AT THE PAST. New York: Harper Brothers.
The author2 of this works, some time since, made a successful debut in the world of fiction, by his "Allen Prescott," and "Alida" novels which had a very successful reception from the novel-reading public. The present work has the merit of being well written, and fully sustains the reputation acquired by the previous productions of the writer. The story opens in the year 1780, in Massachusetts, and is a life-like portraiture of men and manners in the early days of our history.
THE QUEENS OF SCOTTLAND AND ENGLISH PRINCESSES Vol. 8. By Agnes Strickland. New York: Harpers.
Miss Strickland's works have long since given her such a position in the world of letters, that the mere mention of one of them suffices to answer the purpose of the highest commendation. The present volume contains the biographies of Elizabeth Stuart, the first Princess Royal of England, and Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and mother of George I. The present is the concluding volume of the series, on which Miss Strickland's reputation as an author reposes unshakenly.
CICERO DE OFFICIIS, Edited for Cambridge University by the Rev. H. A. Holden, M. A., and corrected and enlarged by Charles Anthon, LL D., of Columbia College, N. Y. Harpers.
While Dr. Anthon's memory will be revered and blessed by thousands of school boys yet unborn, as it is by thousands now living, his reputation at the first of living American classical scholars will give to this text book, as to the many he has issued previously, a cordial and confident reception. No man engrossed in business cares need suffer his Latinity to rust, or his Greek to pass out of memory, while Professor Anthon's editions of the standard authors in the dead languages are in publication. the lucid commentary, the brief but compendious marginal analysis and notes, smooth the difficulties which beset the learner or student, and give a better, clearer, and more speedy acquaintance with the genius and idioms of the language than any other editions that could be named. In fact, Prof. Anthon's classics are rapidly (if they have not done so already) driving the editions of all former commentators out of the schools, both in this country and Europe.
FOWLER'S ELEMENTARY GRAMMAR—abridge from the octavo edition of "English Language in its elements and forms." By Wm. Fowler, (late Professor of Rhetoric in Amherst College). New York: Harpers.
If there is a single department in which we hate change more intensely than others, it is in the matter of text books for the public schools. There are so many worthless books, made only to sell—so many ignorant and shallow attempts to supersede the old standard books—that we put as little faith in the preface of a new school book as in the advertisement of a Syracuse doctor. Nevertheless we think favorably of Mr. Fowler's work, so far as we have had leisure to examine it. He has had peculiar advantages for producing a standard grammar, which shall be to this generation what Murry was to its fathers. He tells us that the defects of Murray were strongly impressed upon his attention while he taught grammar in Yale College; and a subsequent residence in the family of the lexicographer Webster, and the duty entrusted to him of superintending the publication of the University edition of Webster's Dictionary, after the author's death—had combined to turn his attention specially to philology. These are, indeed, ample ground on which the author may base his claim to the introduction of this edition of his work into the Public Schools for which it is designed.