And your regiment, stranger, which was it? | tell!" "Our regiment? It was the Twenty-third." The color fled from the young girl's cheek, "I never knew aught of this gallant youth," "But when we buried our dead that night, One glance, and a look, half-sad, half-wild, Passed over her face, which grew more pale, Then a passionate, hopeless, heart-broken wail, And the mother bent low o'er the prostrate child. In conclusion, we quote a characteristic marching song of the style which will probably find a wider circle of admirers than more finished and elegant strains : TO CANAAN-A SONG OF THE SIX HUNDRED THOU- Where are you going, soldiers, What Captain leads your armies The Mighty One of Israel, What flag is this you carry Along the sea and shore? The same our grandsires lifted upThe same our fathers bore! In many a battle's tempest It shed the crimson rainWhat God has woven in his loom Let no man rend in twain ! To Canaan, to Canaan The Lord has led us forth, To plant upon the rebel towers The banners of the North! What troop is this that follows, The Lord has led us forth, What song is this you're singing? The Lord has led us forth, When Canaan's hosts are scattered, -The Lord will see to that! The Lord has led us forth, To sweep the rebel threshing-floors, Mr. Moore has, in making this admirable collection, not only placed the lovers of national and original poetry under great obligations, but has done a real service to our country and its history in preserving what would otherwise be the ephemeral souvenirs of the war; and should the forthcoming volumes of the series, now compiling under the titles" Songs of the Soldiers" and " Personal and Political Ballads of the War" prove to be as admirably arranged and as judiciously selected as the present volume, they cannot fail to remain among the most interesting and characteristic specimens of our war literature. From The Saturday Review. objects in view. These loaves and rolls which you see around you were made out of flour which, having bought it for that purpose, I and my servants made up into the shape in which it now stands before you, in order that I might make a profit by the sale, and so support my family, and provide for my comforts in old age." The natural question upon this would be, Who ever took any other view of you or your business? And "Hannah Thurston," when compared with its preface, suggests exactly the same question. The book has no plot at all; there is not a line in it which in the faintest degree resembles caricature; and Mr. Taylor may be sure that every reader of ordinary intelligence would have seen for himself that the book was composed of sketches suggested by the author's recollec It was one of De Tocqueville's observations on the effects of democracy in America, that the extreme prosperity of the people and the great simplicity of their habits of life made it next to impossible to write amusing novels about them. Whatever the cause may be, there seems to be no doubt at all of the fact. A certain number of American novels have obtained great popularity, but never by reason of their inherent interest. "Uncle Tom's Cabin " was a successful party pamphlet. Miss Wetherell's tales, "Quecchy" and the "Wide, Wide World," were addressed to the mildest class of the religious public. They might have been described as peculiarly fit for the daughters of Wesleyan shopkeepers in a quiet country town. Mr. Hawthorne's tions of the country towns and villages of his tales have a fair share of fancy and a certain elegance of style, but they are emphatically second-rate. They are pleasant to read, but they want power. He never seems to get beyond a well-behaved man, very conscious of his own accomplishments and elegances, and a crotchety woman with some complaint in her conscience. Every character in his works, so far as we know them, is more or less open to this criticism. Mr. Bayard Taylor has followed exactly in the track of his predecessors. He has written a rather pretty tale of American life in decidedly pretty English, and obviously composed entirely, as he says in his preface, of sketches from real life. He observes, with that faithfulness which authors often show in describing their own works : "I do not rest the interest of the book on its slender plot, but on the fidelity with which it represents certain types of character and phases of society. That in which it most resembles caricature is oftenest the transcript of actual fact, and there are none of the opinions uttered by the various characters which may not now or then be heard in almost any community in the Northern and Western States." After reading the book through, this observation will probably strike the reader as exquisitely simple. It is much as if a respect able baker should say to his customers, "Whatever you may think, I am a man of the most simple habits, and have the plainest *“Hannah Thurston; a Story of American Life." By Bayard Taylor. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co. 1863. native land. It is the regular practice nowa-days for every man who happens to possess a little special knowledge of the works and ways of any part of the human race to go and write a novel about it. Shift the scenes and names in such a way as to avoid personality, and any man may make a more or less readable novel by describing faithfully his own courtship, or that of any one else whom he happens to have known. People who like to know how the countrymen of the author, or how the class to which he belongs, behave under interesting circumstances, will always get some pleasure out of the description, if it is only faithful and lively. An ordinary exertion of memory will fulfil the one condition, and a slight familiarity with style the other. The story of" Hannah Thurston" is simplicity itself, and may indeed, without injustice, be told in one short sentence. Mr. Woodbury settles at Lakeside, near the town of Ptolemy, and, having made the acquaintance of Miss Hannah Thurston, a distinguished advocate of women's rights, marries her. This is literally the whole case. There is no difficulty, no adventure; no one makes the least objection to the marriage as soon as the parties have made up their minds, which they do in a reasonable time; and, in short, Mr. needy knife-grinder, "Story! Lord bless you, Taylor might, if he so pleased, say with the I have none to tell, sir"—which, indeed, is three volumes are made up by setting forth at the fair interpretation of his preface. The length the various opportunities which Mr. Woodbury had of becoming acquainted with the lady whom he married. First, he met her | were not all Puritans of the strictest kind, at certain sewing-circles, and these sewing-cir- one would expect to see them arrayed in Tyrocles and the conversations which passed there lese hats, and carrying pastoral crooks in are fully described. After a time, he gave a their hands. Nobody apparently, except the sewing-circle at his own house, and then, wicked medium who casts his dark shadow again, he talked with the charming Hannah. over a few pages, either does or wants to do, On another occasion they met at a picnic, or contemplates the possibility of doing anyand there Mr. Taylor, seriously considering that a novel, after all, should be more or less of a novel, gives a bold stroke. A little girl is made to fall into a river, from which Mr. Woodbury pulls her out, Hannah helping him. At first the lovers that are to be do not much like each other, as she thinks him worldly, and he thinks her priggish and pedantic, for believing in women's rights. By degrees they get to know each other better, and at last come to taking walks under aldertrees, for the purpose of exchanging confidences, which, of course, can end only in one way. There are two or three little episodes in the book. First, Mr. Woodbury has a sort of bailiff who falls in love with a pretty girl, and is refused by her. He goes into a high fever and is devotedly nursed by his mistress, who, after saving his life, cannot do less than marry him. Secondly, one of the neighbors has a foolish wife, who is imposed on by a medium, and elopes with him to join a community of a more or less spiritualist character. The injured husband, his clergyman, the clergyman's wife, the hero and the heroine, go in pursuit, and overtake the medium and his disciple at an inn. There they proceed to argue the point of the lady's return with curious equanimity, but the hero rushes in with a flashing eye, addresses the medium (with much justice) as a beast, and threatens to throw him out of the window-a mode of treatment which produces the desired result of reducing him to submission. Lastly, the hero goes on a summer tour to Niagara and along the St. Lawrence. On the steamer he meets an old female friend, who had long been married, and with whom he spends some pleasant days. There is something soothing in this sort of repose, after the sensation novels of our own country and of France. Odd as such an arrangement may seem, the descriptions of inns, steamboats, sewing-circles, and the rest, have a certain sort of idyllic and pastoral character. All the people introduced are so innocent, so quiet, and so desperately smitten with the most singular little crotchets, that, if they thing seriously wrong-anything worse than meant to be interesting. The second woman, | own, where all her resolutions will be carried for instance, would have been his old first unanimously by a public meeting of saints, love. He would have run away with her, the chair being taken by an angel. shot her husband, and perhaps have put her out of the way afterwards for taking up with some third person. The question, however, suggests itself, whether this little smack of contingent adultery might not as well have been left out altogether. Drink deep or taste not the Parisian spring. The interest of the book-it would not be fair to charge it with having a moral-is derived from the curious notion which it gives of the prominence of what Mr. Taylor calls the "Isms" in American country life. All the different characters are exercised in their minds by crotchets. They are Vegetarians, Temperance people, believers in Woman's Rights, or Abolitionists, and they are constantly getting up arguments, discussions, and meetings upon their particular little theory. The bulk of the population are, of course, indifferent enough to these fancies, but by Mr. Taylor's account they are the favorite employments and excitements of those who, without rising above the ordinary level of their neighbors in general cultivation, are nevertheless rather more active-minded and inquisitive than the average. The heroine, Hannah Thurston, is a pretty character. There is something interesting in the ardor with which she believes in her little Woman's Rights theory, and in the agony which she feels when any doubt about it is suggested. The unbelieving Woodbury has an awful influence over her : "An insidious, corrosive doubt seemed to bave crept over the foundations of her mental life. The forms of faith, once firm and fair as lonic pillars under the cloudless heaven, rocked and tottered as if with the first menacing throes of an earthquake." All which means that her sceptical lover did not take the whole matter quite so tragically as she was inclined to take it. There is always something creditable in good faith, and it is impossible not to feel an interest in anybody who really does believe without doubting that her own little hobby-horse will carry her straight away to a little heaven of her It must be owned that Hannah's reflections had been a good deal more eloquent than practical. One of her speeches is given-obviously a fair report of some real performance of the kind. The gist of it is, that women ought to be employed, like men, in all kinds of labor which they can perform. The poor young lady is very fluent; but she unhappily meets with the terrible friend with whom her admirer had renewed his acquaintance on the St. Lawrence. Mrs. Blake suggests that, if women" had broad shoulders and narrow hips," they might do many things which are now out of their reach, and she then goes on to make the following observations, which are much to the point, though they might be expressed more plainly :— "There are times when a woman has no in dependent life of her own-when her judg ment is wavering and obscured, when her impulses are beyond her control. The business of the world must go on in its fixed order, Conwhether she has her share in it or not. gresses cannot be adjourned, nor trials postponed, nor suffering futurity neglected to suit her necessities. The prime of a man's activ- ity is the period of her subjection." Hannah felt that "it was not for her, in her, maiden ignorance, to contradict" this. One would have supposed that a woman of thirty must have known that it is no joke to bring children into the world, to nurse them, and to see them through their infancy; and that a person who has to do this for a good many years will have little time or strength for other pursuits. Mrs. Blake might have put this a little more plainly; but the tendency to a certain double-milled politeness, curiously variegated by occasional touches of intentional plainness, not to say coarseness, put in to show that the writer is not afraid, is very characteristic of American style. There is no real ease in it. On the whole, the book leaves a pleasant impression-the impression of a simple, happy, virtuous population, good and kindly in the main, though apt to be vain, pedantic, intolerant, and narrow-minded. From The Saturday Review. above queer specimens are culled, was writMRS. KEMBLE'S PLAYS.* ten between twenty and thirty years ago, and MRS. FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE must surely is, Mrs. Kemble tells us, her only work of the be a lineal descendant of M. Jourdain, and kind produced since her schoolgirl days. we have a shrewd suspicion that she is in Considering the scruples she avows with resome way related to Mr. Tupper. She is spect to the morals of the play of Dumas, of perpetually writing prose without knowing which she has here given us a translation, it, and her views on the process of verse-mak- we must confess ourselves a little surprised ing bear the strongest family likeness to the at the plot of her own tragedy. It is a story views on wisdom-manufacture entertained by of adultery, pur et simple. The young and our "guide, philosopher, and friend" at Al- pretty wife of a worthy but prosy old judge bury. As we have none but the kindliest is seduced with mighty little difficulty by a feelings towards her, we cordially trust that London noble roué, who speedily tires of her, she will find as large and profitable a reading and then coolly enjoins her to sell herself, for public for her poetry as her literary kinsman his benefit, to the wealthy brother of the man does for his philosophy. By cutting up sun- who is going to marry her sister-in-law. The dry moral platitudes into lines of about equal amiable peer further shoots the said brother lengths, Mr. Tupper conceives that he is off-hand, when he detects him at tricks in transmuted into a sage; and tens of thou-card-playing. The process of flattery and desands of ladies agree with him. Why, then, should not Mrs. Kemble divide a series of conversations into sections of from ten to twelve or thirteen syllables-she is not particular as to the exact number-and, printing them in the form of blank verse, thereby become a dramatic poet? The first few pages of her "English Tragedy" afford the following samples of her notions of scanning and rhythm: "Save the honor of being head of a family. Not passable even by the closest kindred. ception by which the seduction is effected is detailed by Mrs. Kemble at considerable length, together with the final insults that the villain heaps upon, his wretched victim, when he insists upon her taking another lover, and handing his gifts over to himself. By and by the doting husband is informed of what has been going on by somebody who writes a letter and leaves it at his gate; upon which he straightway goes nearly out of his senses, and pours forth a quantity of the established theatrical mad talk, while his hair Without a head, like this fellow, comes to be turns entirely white. The miserable wife squeezed." soon dies of remorse; and the judge, having Mrs. Kemble is, in fact, deficient in that very vigorously cursed her up to the last, nicety of ear for the musical flow of sound, vouchsafes his forgiveness at the final mowithout which it is hazardous for a writer to ment; and we learn that he will be tolerably venture beyond the rules of the more rigid happy for the future in the marriage of his school of versifiers. Like many other dra- sister with her lover. The dialogue in which matic writers, she is led astray by the free- these agreeable incidents are told is somewhat dom of the verse of Shakspeare, imagining labored and stagey, with here and there a that she has but to devise some strange and fragment of tolerable force, showing that, if uncouth way of running her long and short Mrs. Kemble is not learned in human nature, syllables together, to be exempted from the she is well up in her dramatic library. In restraints of the strict iambic forms. Like the judge's sister we have the embodiment the same school of dramatists, she has to of her notions of a charming and innocent learn that the versification of Shakspeare is country damsel, in love first of all with flowlike the combinations in harmony of Beetho-ers and rural delights in general, and then ven; it can be attempted safely by none but all at once with her lover. The damsel herthose whose gift of melody is of the highest self is, however, as unreal as her rapturous order. talk about her flowers. Her notion of primThe "English Tragedy," from which the roses is that they are "freckled," that the *Plays. By Frances Anne Kemble. "An Eng-moss in the woods is a "starry green;' lish Tragedy," in Five Acts; "Mary Stuart," trans- while of violets she exclaims with delight that lated from Schiller; "Mademoiselle De Belle Isle," translated from Dumas. London: Longman & Co. they are " delicious creatures." Her lover's 1863. musings on the garden in which she leaves |