land of unbridled passions, poetry, and romance, and the source from which the genius of Byron drew the material for his poem of Mazeppa." Making every allowance for certain expressions of hatred to Russia-a feeling which, to a Pole, is as inextinguishable as it is spontaneous-the reader Friends and Fortune: a Moral Tale. By ANNA will find in the Count's work many suggestive obHARRIET DRURY. When the poem of Annesley, from the same hand, appeared, it fell to the Literary Gazette, as if an old and established privilege, to give the first all-hail of welcome to the young and unknown débutante on the perilous public platform of authorship. Tracing in it features to call to mind such names as Goldsmith and Crabbe, we offered it the reception it deserved, and within a few weeks thereafter, the most efficient of our contemporaries re-echoed the strain, and the just estimation and consequent popularity of Miss Drury was the result. Thus cheered on, our gifted poetess has now essayed her powers on a prose composition; and, we think, with no less comparative success than before. It is a tale delightfully told, and abounding in passages of great feeling and beauty. Again we are reminded of Goldsmith, and that which reminds us, in a right sense, of the Vicar of Wakefield, must be a production of no mean order. [This work has been republished in a handsome style by the Messrs. Appleton, and fully justifies the commendations of the Gazette.] servations as to the probable future of both Poland and her oppressor. Whether the author's splendid vision of the Pole, the Cossack, and the Mahometan, locked in a friendly embrace, and constituting a har monious coalition, will ever be realized, remains to be seen; but no one will doubt the wisdom and the policy of real friendship being cemented between England and France. The two countries thus united, might bid defiance not alone to Russian power, but to that of the whole world.-Westminster Review. The Town; its Memorable Characters and Events. How delightful are such books as Leigh Hunt's; books which one may take up at any odd moment of leisure with the certainty of meeting with something to amuse, something to instruct, something to assist in clothing the realities of every-day life with radiations from the realms of fancy, or in re-peopling the actual world with life-like idealities of its former tenants! This is especially the case with the volumes before us. Mr. Hunt is better fitted, perhaps, poetical and historical associations connected with than any living writer to illustrate the rich store of the world of London, wherewith his sympathies have ever been identified; and the elucidation of its by-gone glories must have been to him indeed a labor of love. As Mr. Hunt well shows in his opening chapter the moral of that charming tale, 'Eyes and no Eyes, is nowhere more clearly exhibited than in the thor A well written and interesting narrative of the history of a curious and little known people, who played an important part in a very eventful portion of Napoleon's career, The author is well fitted for the task he has undertaken, having spent a consideroughfares of a crowded city. One man "may go from Bond-street to Blackwall, and unless he has able part of his life in the inhospitable land he the luck to witness an accident or get a knock from writes upon. He compiled a regular history of the a porter's burthen, may be conscious, when he has Polish Cossacks three years ago; but circumstances returned, of nothing but the names of those two having prevented its publication, the present work places, and of the mud through which he has passis substituted. In its pages the author says: ed;" another may take the same route, and while mind, as Leigh Hunt says, to "put on wings angeliactively observant of the present, he may allow his future," without any let or hindrance to its running back also upon "the more visible line of the past;" of that past which is "the heir-loom of the world."”— Westminster Review. "I describe their [the Cossacks'] piratical expeditions into Turkey, and sketch their dangerous rebellion (fostered by Russia) in Poland, under Chmielnic-cal, and pitch itself into the grand obscurity of the ki, Zelezniak, and Gonta; and not less formidable rebellions in Russia, under Stenko Razin, Mazeppa, and Pugatchef, which rebellions cost Russia nearly a million of human beings, and shook that empire to its very foundation, and even to this time has not only impaired its whole strength, but rendered its continued existence a mysterious problem. Having further described all the branches of the Polish Cossacks, with their most noted chiefs, from almost the beginning of their political existence till our time, I then unveil many interesting facts respecting Catherine II, as connected with Poland, and give a short account of her lovers, and the victims of her hatred, as also the various diabolical intrigues for which she was so infamously celebrated. I conclude the work with a statistical, historical, and geographical description of the Ukraine, from time immemorial the 1. Annals of the Artists of Spain. By WILLIAM STIRLING, M. A. In 3 vols. 2. London: Ollivier. Sacred and Legendary Art. By Mrs. JAMESON. In 2 vols. London: Longmans. The appearance of these elaborate works almost simultaneonsly is an event in the history of Art in England; evidencing, as it does, the general desire which is felt for a more ample critical apparatus than we have hitherto possessed. Each of these works would amply deserve a more extended notice of its contents than we can possibly supply at present, in consequence of the pressure of matter. Mr. Stirling's work comprises a history of Painting in Spain from the first origin of the art to the present day. It enumerates all the works of the Spanish painters which are now extant, and supplies materials for judgment on their merits, which either to the artist, the collector, or the traveller, will be invaluable. The sister arts of Sculpture and Architecture are also incidentally illustrated, and the work is furnished with extensive indices, and adorned by some very excellent engravings of the principal Spanish painters, and of a few of their most striking works. Even the general reader will find in Mr. Stirling's pages much to interest and gratify him, from the biographical character of the work, and the numerous anecdotes which it contains. Mrs. Jameson's book, which is also richly and abundantly illustrated with wood-cuts and engravings, will be found eminently useful as a book of reference to travellers, and also to those who are engaged in the study of paintings. It brings together all the Legends of the Saints which are ordinarily to be found represented in Sculpture and Painting, with a view to the explanation of the subjects which continually meet the eye in all old works of art. It will be found useful in directing modern artists to the appropriate symbols and representations of sacred and legendary subjects. We regard these two works as indispensable to every one who is engaged in the study of the Fine Arts-English Review. Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years 1845 and 1846. By JAMES RICHARDSON. 2 vols. 8vo. There is a good deal of amusement and information to be obtained from these volumes-though they might be advantageously subjected to a winnowing machine. Mr. Richardson gives a graphic account of life in the desert-and his very carelessness at times renders the picture more actual and full than it would otherwise be. His repetitions and varying impressions of the same external circumstances and things give a reality to the picture he draws; though some of them might have been omitted with advantage. We could have spared, RECENT BRITISH PUBLICATIONS. A New Historical Tale, by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton- California; or Four Months among the Gold Diggers, by J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, M. D. A reprint of Bryant's What I saw in California. The Bird of Passage; or Flying Glimpses of Many Lands, by Mrs. Romer. The Apostolical Acts and Epistles from the Peschito, by J. W. Etheridge, M. D. Sir Aymer, a Poem in four Cantos. The Western World, or Travels in the United States in 1846-7, by Alexander Mackay. Correspondence of Schiller and Korner, edited by Leonard Simpson, Esq. Six Months' Service in the African Blockade, by Lieut. Forbes, R. N. Harmony of History with Prophecy, by Josiah Conder. Raphael, or Rays from Life, from the French of Lamartine. "The Rock of Rome, wherein the fundamental traditional dogma of the Roman Catholic Church is confronted with the obviously true interpretation of the Word of God; and proved to be nothing more nor less than a mere invention of Antichrist, and to be forthcoming from the pen of James Sheridan Knowles." Sir George Staunton is about to give the public the result of his examinations on the various modes of rendering the word God in the Chinese language. |