othea is not a living picture, it is but a journal of sundry meditations and readings, a rifacimento of beautiful thoughts and witty sayings. But we feel the happiness which the author enjoyed in so pure and fragrant a retreat from the din and dust of life's highway, and we are led so strongly to sympathize with the love of the beautiful and true, that we can almost make her book living to us. A work very superior to this, is the "Letters from Palmyra." Indeed I am disposed to rank it above any book of the kind I know.

Yet I cannot agree with its panegyrists who speak of it as truly antique in its form and coloring. To me it is wholly modern. In it I breathe the atmosphere of our own day. But I breathe it in the society of a genuine critic, of one who, not by any course of prescribed and advised culture, but for the satisfaction of natural cravings in his own mind, has collected what he here reproduces. He has dared to give himself up to his emotions, and has thus received from taste and sentiment the seeds of all which here bears fruit as thought. To be imbued, thoroughly pervaded by the spirit of another era, and to reproduce it in our own, are quite different processes, and show quite different powers; but the first is much, and the first is here.

The book is full of life-the life of sincere émotion, of earnest meditation. In the heart of the writer the fire on the altar of beauty has not been quenched by the mists of a timid and formal morality, a morality founded rather upon fears as to the social contract, than on the piety inspired by a human nature made in the likeness of a divine nature. He is said to belong to a profession which can offer the fairest examples of intellectual as well as moral growth, a profession which can boast the name of Fenelon--to say nothing of those we might mention in our own time and country. But alas, a profession which is in constant danger of looking at the decorous till it forgets the lovely, of teaching the rule till it forgets the spirit, of grasping duty and quite losing beauty-not that duty need ever cease to be beautiful, no!

"Flowers laugh before her on their beds,

And fragrance in her footing treads,
She doth preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens through her are fresh and strong."

It is only when duty is considered with precept, and outward result, and inward that the unnatural disunion is effected.

regard to outward sentiment violated, Whatever is truly

divine is beautiful as well as wise and true. Teachers should worship the good, but forget not the fair, lest their precepts fall upon young hearts, ay, and most of all, on the hearts of those intended by nature for true angelic messengers from the realms of light to the realms which lie in darkness, more like cutting hail storms than soft vernal showers. Blessed is the man whose intellectual culture corresponds with his moral culture-blessed if he forget not to strew, as nature and Providence have done, flowers on the path of duty--blessed if he do not believe that any faculty given by God need be crushed by the healthy action of conscience-thrice blessed if he have divine faith in the efficacy and safety of divine thought, if he can content himself with arraying a thought, a truth, in such garb as would best recommend it to his own mind, and send it forth to the world heedless of inferences, fearless of consequences. Behold him where he goes, crowds of youthful disciples follow his steps, for he is full of life, and those beings who are richest in life must seek him most. The side which the young favor is always the noblest, and will ultimately prevail. This man is ever animating, because ever animated; his precepts cover the whole ground of humanity, because no part of himself is blighted; rules, technicks, precepts, are of no value to him, except in so far as they are life warm with the breath at once of human and of divine nature.

The productions of such a mind are always calm. There is no anxiety about effect of any kind. The perspective is natural, objects do not obtrude their relations upon the gazer's eye, the lights and shades rest lovingly upon the picture, and it is softened, not veiled, by the fragrant atmosphere of poetry.

So quiet in its beauty, so general in its interest is this book. There is nothing professional in it; no jargon of morality or of connoisseurship, or of sentiment; nothing which could make you certain whether it was written by a lawyer, a physician, or a clergyman, or by a man or a woman. It is youthful in feeling, mature in thought. It shows a reverence for genius and apprehension of its nature. A keen perception, both mental and sensual, of beauty, (in the latter respect, indeed, so keen a perception as is scarce ever to be observed, except in very young persons of peculiarly delicate organization.) It shows also, a love of morality and religion so deep, that they are interwoven with the whole fabric of the book, but never forced on your attention in the shape of set motto or apothegm.

If the style of ancient manners and thought be not maintained in this book, at least there is not that gathering together

of the shreds and patches of antiquity, that elaborate use of ancient oats and salutations, which gives us the mustiness if not the flavor of the old world, and with which we have so often been wearied. Yet I have heard a person of much taste remark, that there is a latinity in the diction which makes the book read like a translation. This may be the reason why so many persons imagine that the book has a thoroughly antique style. But let then read a while in any fine ancient author, and see if they find no difference in the position of the mind on the one and the other occasion-see whether the exquisite forms of antiquity rise without an effort at any spell taken from the Palmyra letters.

The men and women do not live-they do not disclose themselves with that unconscious grace and ease, which is so rarely met with in late creations, yet must remain the true standard of perfection. Here are only sketches, but in a broad generous style. The author, as is always the case with men who have taste and talent rather than genius, paints the best and most striking characters best. Sakspeare, Goethe, or Sir W. Scott, would have endowed with distinctive and speaking life, an obscure slave, like, for instance, the Indian slave who sat at the feet of Zenobia, or a character of delicate tints like the princess Julia. The great artist delights to show his hand as masterly in the "dear little cherub that sits up aloft," as in the virgin who is enthroned in the foreground; but in the tapestry of talent, even great talent which I feel it just to attribute to our author, such characters as Zenobia and Longinus engross the attention.

But we much admire the truly noble view taken by our author of these distinguished beings. An intelligent sympathy with the depths as well as the heights of the soul, with the temptations as well as the exalting influences of ambition, is so desirable, is so unusual.

The conversations are well sustained, the descriptions excellent, the style vigorous and dignified. Throughout the book few inferences are drawn. The reader is left unfettered as the writer was. Even the contrast between Paganism and Christianity is not forced into over bold relief.

Considered as the recreation of a professional man, this book inspires not only respect but delight. "Out of the fullness of the heart" and soul was it written-no love of notoriety-no mania for book-making, because this is the age of book-making, had any thing to do with the task. Considered as an essay upon the times of Aurelian, it is compact, graceful, tasteful. Considered as a work of art, it all but fulfils its ob

ject. How much to say of an American book written by a busy professional man. We thank him heartily for showing what men can do under such circumstances. May he soon again cheer us with the like examples.

S. M. F.

MISS SEDGWICK AND THE CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER.

THE Christian Intelligencer, a paper published in New York, recommended Miss Sedgwick's "Love Token. " Whereupon a correspondent sent the following rebuke, and the Intelligencer humbly admitted its mistake in attempting to find any thing good coming out of Nazareth.

BE ON YOUR GUARD.

"LOVE TOKEN FOR CHILDREN."

"Messrs. Editors.-You have been painfully thrown off your guard, in your paper of Dec. 30th. On page second, inside, you have a notice of Miss Sedgwick's little book entitled, "A Love Token for Children." You commend it as "written in Miss Sedg-wick's best manner," and you recommend it to be "selected as a new-year's gift for children."

"Now assuredly, it is by no means well written; but what is the painful truth, it is a Unitarian book, written by a lady who is a member of a Unitarian church. Your reviewer certainly could not have read it. It is a most unfit book for children. I would just as soon put into the hands of children the Unitarian edition of the Assembly's shorter catechism, adapted to Socinian faith.

"Your inadvertant commendation of this "Love Token," will, I fear, make it a "fatal token” to some heedless souls. Please recall. your notice."

The Intelligencer remarks—

"We therefore retract our former recommendation. While we still allow Miss S. talent at this kind of composition, yet the christian will always require soundness of sentiment diffused throughout, and will consider error more dangerous, in proportion to the indirectness and insidiousness with which it is introduced. We intended to have inserted this explanation last week. Since then we have received the communication which we insert. We stand re

buked, and feel the importance of giving very careful attention to volumes placed in our hands, before we pronounce on their character."

REMARKS.-We have not seen lately, so striking a display of the spirit of bigotry, as this fact indicates. As such it deserves a few remarks. We do not intend to make any exclamations about it-it is not worth while to cry "Oh! Heu! and Proh!" but quietly anatomize and examine it, as a curious product of the day.

Perhaps the reader may think that this book of Miss Sedgwick's inculcates some of the doctrinal opinions of Unitarians. The little volumes which issue from the Presbyterians presses, for infant minds, commonly consists of some bald incidents assuming the form of a story, on which are hung discourses on Total Depravity, Original Sin, &c. The reader may therefore suppose that this is a Unitarian book of the same kind. He would be much mistaken. Not a doctrinal or disputed religoius dogma of any kind is introduced into it. Hinc illæ lacrymæ. The great trouble is that it does not teach the Trinity, Original Sin, &c. Its sins are those of omission solely.

The book is made up of some beautiful stories, parables, or sketches, to inculcate the christian virtues by fair and sweet examples. The first tale, for instance, is called "Overcome evil with good," and shows how a little boy, by courageously conquering his disposition to hate a harsh man who had illtreated him, and taking an opportunity of doing him a good service, overcame the bad temper of the rough farmer. Another, called "Mill Hill," shows a gentle Samaritan, going about on meek offices of love, and pouring the oil and wine of kindness and wisdom, into the wounds of misery and sin. These sketches have the peculiar merit of doing justice to the difficulty of right doing. It is a very easy thing to make stories about little paragons of piety and goodness-little saints in petticoats, who are wise and holy beyond all example. This is easy. But Miss Sedgwick does better. She dwells on the in ward struggle-the bitterness of renunciation-the seduction and sophistry which tempts to wrong--and the strait and narrow way which leads to right. What we want in a moral tale is, that it shall show us how beings like ourselves, "made in all points as we are," and tempered like us, can struggle through.

Our careful heresy hunters, therefore, do not find fault with the book because it inculcates the religious opinions of Unitarians, for it does not, but simply because it is written by a