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and "Redwood."* We speak of them together, as being both experiments in a good cause; not that they are by any means equal in merit. The former, to which we can devote but a few words, is a tale, formed on the early events in the history of New-England; and the author, as he informed us in his preface, was induced to write it, by reading the eloquent article by Mr. Palfrey, in the North American Review, referred to in our last number. That his book is interesting, proves the interest which attaches to all the historical incidents with which it is connected; for, although it is written with much spirit, and the descriptions are generally graphic and poetical, the plot is bad in its conception, and very inartificially managed. The daughter of one of the settlers, supposing her lover to be drowned, and meeting with unkind treatment from her father, a stern Puritan, is ready to offer herself as a wife to Hobomok, an Indian, and to marry him, out of mere despair, as it should seem, at being forsaken by all her other friends. After living with him for a few years, and bearing him a son, her lover unexpectedly returns, and meets, accidentally, her Indian husband. The latter has the magnanimity to form, instantly, a resolution to abandon his wife; who, as he well knew, still cherished her early affection for him, whom she had long since believed buried in the ocean. He, accordingly, causes his divorce to be immediately proclaimed, after the Indian manner, and flies to the western wilderness. The lady is soon after united to her European lover; and the young Hobomok is carefully educated by them. Of his father nothing more is heard. All this is unnatural, or, if the author pleases, improbable and unsatisfactory. But the traditions and historical facts 'connected with the narrative, the description of men and manners, the contrast of individual characters, and the romantic features of the times, of which the author has availed himself, redeem this little volume from the censure and the oblivion which the defects of the mere fable would, we fear, insure. There is, also, much pathos in many passages of the story; and in relating the sickness and death of the heroine's mother, and her friend the Lady Arabella Johnson, the deep but subdued sorrow of the surviving husbands, the desertion and agony of the heroine herself, and her reception in the cabin of Hobomok, by his kind, but uncivilized relations, the author has appealed frequently, and not in vain, to the 'sacred source of sympathetic tears. We regret that, with the same materials, he did not extend his work to the dimensions of the modern novel; and by a little more labour, with the abilities he seems * Hobomok, a tale of early times, by an American. Boston. Cummings, Hilliard & Co.

Redwood, a tale, in two volumes. New-York. E. Bliss & E. White. 1824.

to possess, take a fair stand in the ranks of those who are crè ating for our country a literature of its own.

"Redwood" is a novel of a different order. The authoress, while she obviously, indeed avowedly, makes Miss Edgeworth her model, is neither a servile nor an unequal imitator. She has chosen ground hitherto unoccupied, as the scene of her narratives; and while the moral of her story,-the inculcation of the necessity and excellence of strong and rational religious feeling,―is obviously her chief aim, her materials are purely domestic; and in the delineation of her characters, and the incidents into which the personages she describes are thrown, we recognize what we have all seen and heard and observed, but what no one yet has so faithfully depicted. It is in the affairs of common life, and its every day actors, that she finds resources for her genius; and they furnish materials, which, of all others, require a peculiar nicety of observation, and felicity of management, in the author who employs them. The interest of the narrative must be preserved, without the violation of probability; for every reader is a competent critic on such a production. The promise held forth by the New England Tale,' has been more than abundantly realised in Redwood;' and, without any extravagant, or indeed extraordinary incidents, or any overstrained exhibitions of passion, we are insensibly carried through two highly entertaining volumes, acknowledging the fidelity of every scene to nature; and we rise from their perusal, impressed with the force of the truth, which it was the object of the writer to inculcate, that an intellectual faith in the truth of revelation, is the only true basis of moral rectitude; and that a practical adherence to its precepts, unconnected with mysticism or superstition, is the most beautiful and instructive commentary on the lessons evangelized by its divine founder.

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We offer no adulation at the feet of successful talent; and, while simply expressing our own feelings after reading this work, have no scruples in stating that we are dissatisfied with some of the conversations, where smartness and vivacity are intended to be exhihited: and also with the manner in which we are called back so often, in the first volume, to a detail of antecedent events, while the progress of the action is suspend

ed.

Having mentioned the faults, as we humbly conceive them to be, of this novel, we shall give a brief sketch of the story, and the principal characters; which is all that time and our limits will allow. Henry Redwood is described as having been born, with the seeds of every generous virtue in his heart; but his father, devoted to dissipation, and his mother, resigned

to the indolence so often characteristic of our southern countrywomen, took no pains in their development. With no early and strong religious impressions, he becomes an infidel at college, under the influence of an unprincipled fellow-student. The volume of inspiration became to him in reality a sealed book; he opened it only to find matter for irreverent mirth, or ignorant criticism. A natural purity of taste, however, and an instructive preference of what was good, survived the wreck, (if it may be so called,) of principle; and though confirmed in coldblooded skepticism, he, often, in the contemplation of a virtuous action, sighed like the philosopher in the story of La Roche, and wished that he had never doubted.'

He marries, without the knowledge of his friends, (who had destined him as the husband of a rich relation,) a young lady in humble circumstances, but of great acquirements and virtues. His infidel friend prevails on him to accompany him to Europe; and he leaves his wife without informing her of his intended departure. By an accident, she discovers his sentiments on the subjectof religion, and is induced to believe,what was not, in fact true,—that his regard for her had been a mere transient caprice, and that he longed to be delivered from his engagement. She leaves the family, with whom he left her, and finds a refuge in a distant part of the country, with a friend, in whose house she dies, soon after having given birth to a daughter. The latter circumstance, though soon suspected by every reader, is not disclosed, until the story draws near its end. While immersed in the dissipations of Paris, the image of his deserted wife rarely crossed his recollection.

"But after he had left Paris, in the farther prosecution of his travels, there were times when she was remembered; the powers of conscience, spell bound by the noise and glare of society, were awakened by the voice of the Divinity issuing from the eloquent places of nature. The pure streams, the placid lakes, the green hills, and the fixed mountains looking tranquillity,' seemed to reproach him with his desertion of nature's fairer work; for all the works of nature are linked together by an invisible, an 'electric chain.' Redwood hurried from place to place; he tried the power of novelty, of activity; he gazed on those objects that have been the marvel, and the delight of the world; and when the first excitement was over, he felt that he could not resist the great moral law, which has indissolubly joined virtue and happiness." Vol. I. P. 72.

On arriving at Rome, he receives a letter from the clergyman who had married him, informing him of his wife's death, and inclosing a letter to him, written two days before that event, in which she forgives him, and takes a cold farewell, in language sufficiently intimating that her former love had departed.

After the first paroxism of his grief was over, an indifference for all mankind succeeded in the feelings of Redwood: he returned to his native country, and consented to the marriage with his rich cousin. She bore him a daughter, and a few years afterwards died. The education of this child was entirely neglected her father took no concern about it himself; and she was spoiled by a foolish grandmother. We find her at the commencement of the narrative, beautiful, but heartless; accomcomplished, but ignorant, vain and overbearing. Having made the northern tour,' with her father, their carriage is overturned near the borders of Lake Champlain, by which the latter is so much injured, that they are detained for some weeks in the house of a worthy farmer. In this same house, Ellen, the unknown daughter of Redwood, is, at the same time, on a visit to its mistress, one of her earliest friends. The contrast between the sisters, is finely preserved; and the character of Ellen, who, having attracted, very early, the attention of a well-educated lady, with whom she had eventually become domesticated, had enjoyed the double advantage of learning what was practically useful, and cultivating highly her intellectual powers, is drawn by the author in a manner which evinces the pleasure she took in its description. We are introduced also to two females, from the society of the shakers; the elder, a rigid devotee of their sect; the younger, restrained from leaving it, only by her affection and respect for her aunt. The account of the manners and habits of this society, and the narrative of the young Emily's deliverance from the confinement in which she had been placed, by a villain, who had deserted the sect, form a highly interesting episode in the work.

Redwood had always intended to unite his daughter to the son of a deceased friend, who joins him during the confinement occasioned by his accident, but soon discovers too many unamiable points in the character of his proposed bride, and falls deeply in love with Ellen, her innocent and artless rival. The slighted lady, who had conceived an antipathy for Ellen, on first seeing her, begins now to hate her cordially. The latter had in her keeping, a box, left by her mother, with a dying injunction that it should not be opened until her daughter should arrive at the age of twenty-one, or be married. Miss Redwood having ascertained where this precious relic was deposited, in the wantonness of malignant curiosity, violated the lock, and discovered within the box the picture of her father, and the sad narrative of Ellen's mother. Abstracting them from their receptacle, she returned it again locked to its place. After many minor incidents, which we must pass over, Redwood is supposed to be dying, at Lebanon Springs. His daughter has found an old admirer, in a British officer, and Ellen is per

suaded to accept the hand of her lover, and open the mysterious casket, which was supposed to contain a clue to the secret of her birth. She finds in it only the frame of a miniature. By a probable circumstance, however, the rifled pacquet is found on the dressing table of Miss Redwood, who had eloped with her admirer. She is recalled by the active pursuit of Ellen's lover, and overwhelmed with the detection of her frailties, sues for pardon from her injured sister. They are both married, and their father is restored to health. In his sickness, he had perused for the first time, with a candid and inquiring spirit, the volume of inspiration, presented to him by Ellen, and his reason and heart had assented to its truths.

There is a character not mentioned, that cannot be passed over, being the most original in the work. It is that of Deborah, a Yankee maiden of a certain age, who was one of the inmates of the farm-house, where Redwood was received; after his accident in the commencement of the story. Her decided, though not coarse vulgarity, is more than redeemed by the shrewdness of her judgment, and goodness of her heart. peculiarities of her dialect are well preserved throughout; and the account of her conducting Ellen to the Shaker settlement and the springs, in her one horse chaise, with the detail of her carriage and conversation in the different companies into which she fell, is highly delightful and entertaining.

The

As a mere novel, the correctness of style, the interest of the fiction, and the excellence of the descriptions, would entitle this work to high praise. But the vein of pure moral feeling which runs through it, and the instructive lesson it is designed to teach, demand for the authoress no common place among writers of this class. It has been said that America has never produced a female writer of eminence. If the writer of Redwood' is not the only exception, she is certainly the brightest; and we trust, that a long career is before her, of still increasing utility and fame.

[The following ode to La Fayette, is from the pen of Dr. Isaac Snowden, of Philadelphia.]

AD

FAVETIUM

Nobilissimum ac Illustrissimum,
Galliæ decus, nec non humani generis;
DEFENSOREM STRENUUM
Libertatis Americana Septentrionalis,
Ad visendas Civitates Foederatas venturum

Cærulus æther celeres et auræ
Sint tibi, navis, mare trans serenum
Quæ ferat jamjam caput, O FAVETI,
Tem mihi carum.

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