NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. remaining eight and forty chapters. Mr. Thackeray's works have no affinity with this class. Another sort of bad morality in fiction prevails to an alarming extent in the novel of "low-life." The characters who figure in books of this description are less tolera THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. His Fortunes and Mis-ble than all others, in being very gross, unrefined persons, who are not sufficiently well-bred for the highway, and whose conversation is plentifully adorned with the profane slang of St. Giles's. The principal male performer, (we cannot call him a hero,) generally appeals to the sympathy of the reader by a swaggering bravado under some most righteous sentence of the law, and at last swings at Tyburn with the air of a martyr to the wayward sense of justice of his countrymen. Those who look in Mr. Thacked. The scoundrelism of sentiment and the villainy of In forming a proper estimate of the merits and capacity the melodrama are alike unvarnished by his narrative. of William Makepeace Thackeray, our readers may be There is yet another class of novels that has sprung up assisted by a few outlines of his biography which we give within a few years past-those which aim at great politiupon the authority of the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Thack-cal reforms, or theological expositions. Of this school is eray is now about thirty-eight years of age. He is of a good family and was originally intended for the bar, but after spending some years at the University of Cambridge, went off, without his degree, to the continent, with the view of making an artist of himself. He spent some time in copying pictures in the French galleries, but as his talent in this line was rather of a comic kind and consisted chiefly in his being able to sketch rapidly scenes and incidents for the amusement of his friends, he soon abandoned the brush and took to the pen. His first effort in the world of let-ence and the cant of reform, our author is content to give ters was a weekly journal on the plan of the "Athenæum," which, though brilliant while it lasted, soon gave up competition with the firmly-rooted popularity of the older establishments. "It sparkled, was exhaled and went to"that oblivion which sooner or later awaits all papers and magazines. Mr. Thackeray then became a contributor to Fraser and Punch, afterwards wrote "The Irish Sketch Book" and "Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Cairo," works of an amusing, but not a very superior character, and at last struck into that vein of sterling ore of which "Vanity Fair" was the first shining specimen, and at which he is working with great success in "Pendennis." We took occasion last month to commend to the public favor the first two numbers of this charming work. The appearance of No. 3 affords us an opportunity, which we gladly embrace, of considering more at length the literary merits of its author, who has risen in twelve months from the rank of a respectable magazine-writer to the first hon-eray's pages for such vulgarity as this, will be disappointors of the English novelist. Miss Martineau and the authors of the Puseyite fictions en masse, who make the main object of their writings the enforcement of some very doubtful proposition in theology or political economy. It has been well said of these that they cannot avoid a petitio principii in the execution of their plan, and that it is just as easy, by imaginary incidents and plots of their own invention, to fortify one doctrine as another. Mr. Thackeray is not of this school. Equally free from false sympathy, the affectation of sci his views of society throngh the pleasant medium of genuine, honest love-stories, just such, in design, as in times past called forth the tears of our grandmothers, and, when plainly told, will continue to subdue the soul as long as woman's eye beams and woman's lip smiles and woman's voice is melody to man. Love in its rightful acceptation, generous, tearful, confiding, devoted love, with its varying phases on earth, is theme enough for the most brilliant composer to interweave with the expressions of his own heart-music, and the soft and doleful air, the old and moving story, with which the beauteous Genevieve was wooed and won, suffices to unlock the sympathies of the race. We cannot better preface our desultory remarks on these It is in unfolding some such narrative as this, that Mr. remarkable volumes-which bear, in our judgment, about Thackeray presents himself to us in his most salient point the same relation to his other productions that the finest of view-as the satirist, par excellence, of the age. In sculptures of Chantrey bear to the first rude carvings of shooting Folly as it flies, there is no marksman at all comhis chisel, than by a negative description, in pointing out parable with him. Every shot tells. In the world of some classes of the modern novel to which they do not London around him—no bad epitome of the great, busy belong. We shall presently see, in the prosecution of this world itself-he walks through the French Row and the design, that our author has hit upon a manner of fictitious Italian Row of its "Vanity Fair," seizing upon every foicomposition which, if it be not original, is at least refresh-ble that his keen observation detects, and exposing it in ingly different from the ordinary run of novels since the days of Fielding and of Scott. terms as unmistakable as those employed by Faithful in the allegory, before the jury of which Mr. Blindman was the foreman. Yet is our author no cynic. If he makes war upon worldliness, he is not affected with misanthropy. The great expanse of society lies spread out before him, and if there are arid and blackened spots upon its surface, if the slough of falsehood and the desert of selfishness appear in gloomy perspective to the eye of the pilgrim, there are yet nooks brightened with occasional bursts of the mellowest and holiest sunshine. We do not lay down one of Thackeray's novels, where we have encountered characters, (alas, too correctly portrayed,) of the worst description, with the impression on our minds that the world has in it nothing of goodness or of purity. "The world," says he, "is a looking-glass, and gives forth to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you: laugh at it, and it is a jolly, kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice." And is not this a right genial, loving creed, When the school of Mrs. Radcliffe, with all its dear, delightful terrors, its mysterious tapestries and its moonlight minstrels, went into decline, there arose among second-rate authors a new and more vicious one, borrowed from the French, the school of "high-life." The most striking feature of this school is the ease and elegance with which the dramatis personæ contrive to break the ten commandments without shocking the moral sensibilities of the reader. The venue being transitory, the scene is changed readily from England, where the book opens, to the continent, and the hero appears as a German Count, (“honors are easy" in continental Europe,) invested with every quality that can attract admiration. The heroine, who has been already introduced as somebody else's wife, falls in with him in a gorge of the Alps, is rescued by him from the attack of a gang of banditti, and the amiable pair, after exchanging vows of eternal constancy and affection, run off with each other and defy heaven and earth through the for a satirist? It is a rare thing that Mr. Thackeray attempts pathos, did arrange it. Are you éprise of him? He says you are, but when he does so, he is unsurpassed by any one but but I know better; it is the beau cousin. Yes-il a de Dickens. To say that he "attempts" it, at any time, is beaux yeux. Je n'aime pas les blonds ordinairement, perhaps an improper expression, because he seems really Car je suis blonde moi—je suis Blanche et blonde,”—and to be always striving to avoid it. His terror of maudlin she looked at her face and made a moue in the glass; and sentiment is such, that he even endeavors to cover his pa- never stopped for Laura's answer to the questions which thetic passages with a playful irony. It is this very dis- she had put. position, perhaps, that renders his pathos so exquisite. In spite of him, however, the spark will now and then flash out, touching "the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound." แ The History of Pendennis," of which we have read not quite one half, is, thus far, as true to the life and as bitingly satirical as "Vanity Fair." It contains some more lenient readings of human motives than that famous book, and the ladies, who considered themselves greatly ill-used by the accomplished rascality of Becky Sharp and the sweet silliness of Amelia Sedley, will find in it full amends for Mr. Thackeray's offences against them. The female character is made the subject of high eulogium in the first number, and the heroine of the tale, though not represented as a paragon of excellence, has an amiability in her savoir vivre that is quite angelic. One of the "womankind" of the story is a delicious portraiture. We cannot help setting her before our readers, at the risk of a long extract. The sentimental Miss has never been so "done" before. It may be sufficient to enable them to understand the dialogue we are about to give, to say that Miss Amory, the step-daughter of Sir Francis Clavering, has recently come with her parents to reside at Clavering Park in the neighborhood of Fairoaks, where live Mrs. Pendennis, her son the hero, and Miss Laura Bell, an adopted daughter who passes, with the young gentleman, by the endearing title of cousin. "Sir Francis is a very judicious parent,' Miss Amory whispered. Don't you think so, Miss Bell? I shan't call you Miss Bell-I shall call you Laura. I admired you so at church. Your robe was not well made, nor your bonnet very fresh. But you have such beautiful grey eyes, and such a lovely tint.' "Blanche was fair and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with green reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had long black eye-lashes, which vailed beautiful brown eyes. She had such a slim waist, that it was a wonder to behold; and such slim little feet, that you would have thought the grass would hardly bend under them. Her lips were of the color of faint rosebuds, and her voice warbled limpidly over a set of the sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them very often, for they were very pretty. She was very goodnatured, and a smile not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise exhibited two lovely little pink dimples, that nestled in either cheek. "She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought charming. She played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and brilliant finger, and Laura was still more charmed. And she then read her some poems, in French and English, likewise of her own composition, and which she kept locked in her own book-how own dear little book; it was bound in blue velvet with a gilt lock, and on it was printed the title of 'Mes Larmes.' "Mes Larmes!-isn't it a pretty name?' the young lady continued, who was pleased with every thing that she did, and did every thing very well. Laura owned that it was. She had never seen any thing like it before; any thing so lovely, so accomplished, so fragile and pretty; warbling so prettily, and tripping about such a pretty room, with such a number of pretty books, pictures, flowers, round about her. The honest and generous country girl forgot even jealousy in her admiration. Indeed, Blanche,' she said, 'every thing in the room is pretty; and you are the prettiest of all.' The other smiled, looked in the glass, went up and took both of Laura's hands, and kissed them, and sat down to the piano, and shook out a little song, as if she had been a 66 "Thank you,' said Miss Bell, laughing. "Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is un-nightingale. easy de sa personne. He has not seen the world yet. "This was the first visit paid by Fairoaks to Clavering Has he genius? Has he suffered? A lady, a little woman Park, in return for Clavering Park's visit to Fairoaks, in in a rumpled satin and velvet shoes-a Miss Pybus-reply to Fairoaks's card left a few days after the arrival came here and said he has suffered. I, too, have suffer- of Sir Francis's family. The intimacy between the young ed-and you, Laura, has your heart ever been touched?' ladies sprang up like Jack's Bean-stalk to the skies in a “Laura said "No!' but perhaps blushed a little at the single night. The large footmen were perpetually walkidea of the question, so that the other said— ing with little rose-colored-pink notes to Fairoaks where "Ah, Laura! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell there was a pretty housemaid in the kitchen, who might me every thing. I already love you as a sister.' possibly tempt those gentlemen to so humble a place. "You are very kind,' said Miss Bell, smiling, 'and-Miss Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new and it must be owned that it is a very sudden attach-novel, or a picture from the Journal des Modes,' to ment.' “All attachments are so. It is electricity-spontaneity. It is instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment I saw you. Do you not feel it yourself?' "Not yet,' said Laura; but I dare say I shall if I try.' "Call me by my name then.' "But I don't know it,' Laura cried out. Laura; or my lady's compliments arrived with flowers and fruit; or Miss Amory begged and prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner; and dear Mrs. Pendennis, if she was strong enough; and Mr. Arthur, if a hum-drum party were not too stupid for him; and would send a ponycarriage for Mrs. Pendennis; and would take no denial." My name is Blanche-isn't it a pretty name? Call ing Park together, yet sometimes Mr. Pen took walks me by it.' "Blanche-it is very pretty indeed.' there unattended by her, and about which he did not tell her. He took to fishing the Brawl, which runs through the park, and passes not very far from the garden-wall. And by the oddest coincidence, Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her flowers,) and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis fishing. "And while manma talks with that kind looking ladywhat relation is she to you? She must have been pretty once, but is rather passée; she is not well gantée, but she has a pretty hand—and while mamma talks to her, come with me to my own room-my own, own room. It's a "I wonder what trout Pen caught while the young lady darling room, though that horrid creature, Captain Strong, was looking on? or whether Miss Blanche was the pretty little fish which played round his fly, and which Mr. Pen up to the present time, very considerable; but her griefs was endeavoring to hook? It must be owned, he became very fond of that healthful and invigorating pursuit of angling, and was whipping the Brawl continually with his fly. plaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self-indulgence (I am sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in question is called the dropsy) and the more you cry, the more you will be able and desirous to do so. lay, like those of most of us, in her own soul-that being sad and habitually dissatisfied, what wonder that she should weep? So Mes Larmes dribbled out of her eyes any day at command; she could furnish an unlimited "As for Miss Blanche, she had a kind heart; and hav-supply of tears, and her faculty of shedding them ining, as she owned herself' suffered' a good deal in the creased by practice. For sentiment is like another comcourse of her brief life and experience-why, she could compassionate other susceptible beings like Pen, who had suffered too. Her love for Laura and that dear Mrs. Pendennis redoubled: if they were not at the Park, she was not easy unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read French and German with Laura: and Mr. Pen read French and German along with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Göthe into English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked Mes Larmes' for him, and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her own tender muse. "It appeared from these poems that this young creature had indeed suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea of suicide. Death she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose inspired her with such grief that you would have thought she must die in pain of it. It was a wonder how a young creature (who had had a snug home, or been at a comfortable boarding-school, and had no outward grief or hardship to complain of) should have suffered so much should have found the means of getting at such an ocean of despair and passion (as a run-away boy who will get to sea), and having embarked on it, should survive it. What a talent she must have had for weeping to be able to pour out so many of Mes Larmes! "They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche's tears, that is the truth; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well for a lady-and wrote some verses himself for her. He was very violent and passionate, very hot, sweet and strong; and he not only wrote verses; but-O, the villain! O, the deceiver! he altered and adapted former poems in his possession, and which had been composed for a certain Miss Emily Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss Blanche Amory." “Our accomplished little friend had some peculiarities "Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine was her favorite bard from the period that she first could feel; and she had improved her mind by a sedulous study of novels of the great modern authors of the French language. There was not a romance of Balzac and George Sand which the indefatigable little creature had not devoured by the time she was sixteen; and, however little she sympathized with her relatives at home, she had friends, as she said, in the spirit-world, meaning the tender Indiana, the passionate and poetic Lelia, the amiable Trenmor, that high-souled convict, that angel of the galleys-the fiery Stenio-and the other numberless heroes of the French romances. She had been in love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Djalma while she was yet at school, and had settled the divorce question, and the rights of woman, with Indiana, before she had left off pinafores. The impetuous little lady played at love with these imaginary worthies, as a little while before she had played at maternity with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits! it is curious to watch them with those play things. To-day the blue-eyed one is the favorite, and the black-eyed one is pushed behind the drawers. To morrow blue-eyes may take its turn of neglect; and it may be an odious little wretch with a burned nose, or torn head of hair, and no eyes at all, that takes the first place in Miss's affection, and is dandled and caressed in her arms." We shall look with impatience for the forthcoming Nos. of "Pendennis," which we are sure our readers will be eager to read in full, after enjoying the foregoing extracts. spirited wood-cuts from the designs of the author. The work is excellently printed and embellished with For sale by Morris & Brother. HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848. By A. De Lamartine. Translated by Francis A Durivage and William S. Chase. First American Edition. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 110 Washington street. 1849. or defects of character which rendered her not very popular. She was a young lady of some genius, exquisite sympathies and considerable literary attainments, living, like many another genius, with relatives who could not comprehend her. Neither her mother nor her step-father were persons of a literary turn. Bell's life and the Racing Calendar were the extent of the baronet's reading, and Lady Clavering still wrote like a school girl of thirteen, and with an extraordinary disregard to grammar and spelling. And as Miss Amory felt very keenly that she was not appreciated, and that she lived with persons If the world is not at last made fully acquainted with who were not her equals in intellect or conversational the life and adventures of this dangerous man-this Gallic power, she lost no opportunity to acquaint her family cir- orator, minstrel, statesman, philosopher and hero-it will cie with their inferiority to herself, and not only was a certainly be no fault of M. Alphonse de Lamartine. In martyr, but took care to let everybody know that she was Raphaël and Les Confidences he has recently told the so. If she suffered, as she said and thought she did, se- public how badly he conducted himself in his boyhood, verely, are we to wonder that a young creature of such what conquests of peerless damsels he achieved, still atdelicate sensibilities should shriek and cry out a good tested by touching souvenirs in the shape of tresses, and deal? Without sympathy life is nothing; and would it what requital he made for the tenderest affection ever lavnot have been a want of candor on her part to affect a ished by woman on our inconstant and ungrateful sex. cheerfulness which she did not feel, or pretend a respect Years before the publication of these books, he had been for those toward whom it was quite impossible she should gracious enough to narrate what glorious things Lady entertain any reverence? If a poetess may not bemoan Hester Stanhope had foretold of his future career, and her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre? Blanche struck now he comes forward to show how her predictions have hers only to the saddest of tunes; and sang elegies over her dead hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as became such a melancholy fate and muse. "Her actual distress, as we have said, had not been, been verified, in a work which we have no hesitation in saying is the most remarkable specimen of self-laudation that has ever come under our notice. Egotism indeed was but little understood until the French feuilleton commenced its interminable labours. There had, it is true, been some egotists prior to that time, on both sides of the Channel. Byron had laid bare his whole being to the eyes of mankind, and Jean Jacques, a hundred years before him, had exemplified the maxim of Rochfaucauld, to the effect, that we had rather talk of our faults than not talk of ourselves at all. But both the Englishman and the Genevese did, at times, pass from self to other topics; a transition which the modern Frenchman never makes. Whatever he writes, he is in his own proper person the burthen of the strain. So infectious has this practice become, that it pervades all classes of writers, and we have seen the great Chauteaubriand, in the evening of his life, reading out to a little band of claquers around his own fireside, those revelations of his inmost being, which should never have spoken to us even from "Beyond the Tomb." We have the less patience with this egotism too, when we consider that it meets with the largest pecuniary rewards. While administering to his vanity the French author is filling his purse, and his receipts seem to bear a direct proportion to his use of the first person singular. A book full of the author's confessions-no matter whether they disclose things which all honorable men would keep closely locked up in their bosoms-will sell,-if written for La Presse or the Siècle, will pay handsomely-while a writer who discusses other subjects finds few readers and small remuneration. Perhaps the fault may after all be with the mass of readers and the man who publishes. Sidney Smith once asked "if all the decencies and delicacies of life were in one scale and five francs in the other, what French bookseller would feel a single moment of doubt in making his election?" In this day, we fear that with the booksellers and bookmakers, a few sous would be quite sufficient to determine the balance. Of all the writers of the modern French school we think M. de Lamartine is the most insufferably vain. He seems to have undertaken systematically, since the eventful month of February, 1848, to show to France and the rest of the world how exquisitely the good and great qualities of Socrates, Scipio, Paul, Charlemagne, Milton and Washington combine in the person of the representative of Macon. He appears in his own pages as a man too sublimated for the age in which destiny has cast his lot, an expounder of truths which mankind is not yet prepared to receive, an embodiment of wisdom of which the world is not worthy. The suffrages of the people for the first President of the Republic were withheld from him, in his judgment, because he was not appreciated. Let the people read his "History of the Revolution of 1848” and they will become sensible of their great mistake. They will then see how they suffered the most enlarged patriotism to go unrewarded, And like the base Judean threw a pearl away After describing the irruption of the populace, into the court of the hotel, Lamartine (speaking of himself in the third person) says: "Lagrange, with dishevelled hair, and two pistols at his girdle, with excited gestures, subduing the crowd by his lofty figure, and the tumult by his voice, that resembled the roaring of the masses, was striving in vain, in the midst of his friends of the evening and those who had gone be yond him in the morning, at once to satisfy and restrain the zeal of this crowd, intoxicated with victory, impatience, suspicion, tumult, and wine. The almost inarticulate voice of Lagrange as much excited frenzy by its tone as it desired to appease it by its meaning. Tossed about like the mast of a vessel, from group to group, he was borne from the staircase to the passage, from the door to the windows. With extended arms and salutations of the head, he cried from above to the multitude in the courts, with supplicating speeches, which were carried away by the winds, or drowned by the howling in the lower stories, and the noise of the firing. A weak door, which could hardly allow two men to pass abreast, served as a dike against the crowd, arrested by their own weight. Lamartine, raised on the arms and shoulders of some good citizens, rushed to it. He broke it open, preceded only by his name, and found himself again alone, struggling with the most tumultuous and foaming waves of the sedition. "In vain the men nearest to him cried out his name to the multitude-in vain they raised him at times upon their entwined arms, to show his form to the people, and to obtain silence, if it were only from curiosity. The fluctua tion of this crowd, the cries, the shocks, the resounding of the strokes of muskets against the walls, the voice of Lagrange, interrupting with hoarse sentences the brief silence of the multitude, rendered all attitude and speech impossible. Engulphed, stifled, and crowded back against the door, which was closed behind him, it only remained for Lamartine to allow the deaf and blind irruption to pass over his body, with the red flag, which the insurgents raised above their heads, as a standard, victorious over the vanquished government. "At last some devoted men succeeded in bringing to him a broken straw-covered chair, upon which he mounted, as it were upon a tottering tribune, which was supported by the hands of his friends. From his appearance, from the calmness of his figure which he strove to render so much the more impassible as he had the more passions to restrain, from his patient gestures, from the cries of the good citizens imploring silence that he might be heard, the crowd, with whom a new spectacle always commands attention, began to group themselves into an audience, and to quiet by degrees their noise. "Lamartine began many times to speak, but at each fortunate attempt to subdue this tumult by his look, his arm and his voice, the voice of Lagrange haranguing on his side another portion of the people from the windows, discourse, and roaring of the crowd, which drowned the words and action of Lamartine, and caused the sedition to triumph by confusion. They finally calmed Lagrange, and drew him from his tribune. He went to carry persuasion other parts of the edifice; and Lamartine, whose resolution increased with the danger, could finally make himself heard by his friends and his enemies. It is a melancholy thing to recognize this cardinal weak-raised again in the hall the guttural cries, fragments of ness in so remarkable a person as Lamartine. For assuredly he has many admirable and attractive traits, and there is something in him above the flippancy of the old philosophes. When the last Revolution broke out, there were many in republican America who watched his movements with eager interest and applauded that noble effort at the Hotel de Ville which made him, for the space of half-anhour, a truly great man. In taking up the History now before us, we were naturally curious to know in what manner Lamartine would speak of this event. Our readers shall see for themselves in the following extract, which, as it is the only one our limits will allow us to make, must serve to substantiate the charge of insufferable vanity we have brought against the author. "He first calmed the people by an eloquent hymn upon the victory so sudden, so complete, so unhoped for even by republicans the most desirous of liberty. He called God and men to witness the admirable moderation and religious humanity which the mass of this people had shown, even in combat and in triumph. He roused again that sublime instinct which had, during the evening, thrown this people, still armed, but already obedient and discip-| much too near the Revolution of 1848 to judge correctly lined, into the arms of a few men devoted to calumny, to of its events and personages. To see these in a proper weariness and death, for the safety of all. point of view, there should be a perspective of at least two "At these pictures the crowd began to admire them-generations, and the observer should be free from the preselves, and to shed tears over the virtues of the people. judices of the times. Enthusiasm soon raised them above their suspicions, their vengeance and their anarchy. As we have not seen the original version of M. de Lamartine's history, we cannot pass judgment on the merits of the translation. It is very smoothly done and we doubt not with reasonable fidelity. HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY, from its "Citizens, see what the sun of yesterday beheld!' continued Lamartine. And what will the sun of to-day witness? It will see another people so much the more furious as it has fewer enemies to combat, defying the very men whom yesterday they had raised above them; constraining them in their liberty, humbling them in their dignity, despising them in their authority, which is only your own; substituting a revolution of vengeance and punishment for one of unanimity and fraternity, and commanding their government to raise, in token of concord, the standard of deadly combat between citizens of a common country!-that red banner, which they have some- The friends of the Bible Society will find in this voltimes been able to raise when blood was flowing, as a ter- ume the supply of a want that has often been felt. The ror to their enemies, but which they ought to lower imme- American Bible Society is one of the noblest charities of diately after the combat, in sign of reconciliation and the age, and has attracted to it the sympathies of many peace! I should prefer the black flag, which sometimes of the best men of all parties and sects. But havin a besieged city, floats like a winding-sheet,to designate ing been in existence for more than thirty years, and its to the bomb the neutral edifices consecrated to humanity, field of labor spread over nearly the whole world, it was and which even the bullet and the shell of the enemy must necessary to consult a great variety of documents, not easpare. Do you wish, then, that the banner of your re-sily accessible to all, in order to obtain complete informapublic should be more menacing and sinjster than that of a bombarded town?' "No, no!' cried some of the spectators; 'Lamartine is right; let us not preserve this flag of terror for the citizens!'-'Yes, yes!' cried others! 'it is ours, it is that of the people. It is that with which we have conquered. Why, then, should we not preserve, after the victory, the standard which we have stained with our blood?' "Citizens,' resumed Lamartine, after having opposed the change of the banner by all the reasons most striking to the imagination of the people, and, as it were, withdrawing upon his personal conscience for his last argument, thus intimidating the people, who loved him, by the menace of his retreat: 'Citizens, you can offer violence to the government; you can command it to change the flag of the nation, and the name of France, if you are so badly counselled, and so obstinate in your error, as to force upon it the republic of a party, and the standard of terror. The government, I know, is as decided as myself, to die rather than to dishonor itself by obeying you. AS for me, never shall my hand sign this decree! I will refuse, even to the death, this flag of blood; and you should repudiate it still more than I! for the red flag which you offer us has only made the tour of the Champ de Mars, drawn through the blood of the people in '91 and in '93; while the tri-colored banner has made the circuit of the world, with the name, the glory, and the liberty of the country!' "At these last words, Lamartine, interrupted by almost unanimous cries of enthusiasm, fell from the chair which served him as a tribune into the arms stretched towards him from all sides! The cause of the new republic tri-| umphed over the bloody reminiscences which would have been substituted for it. A general impulse, seconded by the gestures of Lamartine and the influence of good citizens, caused the rioters, who filled the hall, to fall back as far as the landing-place of the great staircase, with cries of Vive Lamartine! vive le drapeau tri-colore!" "L'etat," we can hear our author saying triumphantly, "L'etat c'est moi." tion as to many points connected with its proceedings. It was the experience of this difficulty that led to the compilation of the volume before us. In the execution of the work, the author has spared no pains to ensure completeness, accuracy and clearness. As the operations of the Society have extended to almost every part of the world, we have a great deal of information here embodied that is valuable and interesting, independent of its relation to the circulation of the Bible. This Society having auxiliaries, at least in Virginia and South Carolina, if not in other Southern States, that are several years older than itself; and having numbered among its patrons and officers such names as Pinckney, Gaston, Wirt, Bushrod Washington, and others of like lustre, there are many of our readers, we doubt not, who will regard this volume with interest, not only on account of its intrinsic value, but on account of the cause whose progress it details. OUTLINES OF ASTRONOMY. By Sir John Herschel. Bart. The student of Astronomy will find this treatise the very best guide to his labours that he can secure. It is an enlargement of Sir John Herschel's work on Astronomy furnished to the Cabinet Cyclopædia in 1833, with the introduction of much new aud valuable materiel. The reprint of Messrs. Lea & Blanchard is very carefully got ten up, and contains all the plates, wood cuts and indexes of the original London edition. For sale by Morris & Brother. THE MAN OF LETTERS: an Address, delivered before the Mr. Reynolds is a man of elegant scholarship and reguOf the work before us as a history, apart from the self-lar habits of thought, and the high expectations which glorification of the historian, we do not think very highly. were raised in us by his name on the title-page of the presIndeed it would be a miracle if it were reliable. We are ent Address, have not been disappointed in the reading. |