LITERARY NOTICES.

HENRY OF GUISE, OR THE STATES OF BLOIS. By G. P. R. JAMES, Esq., Author of 'Richelieu,' etc. In two volumes, 12mo. pp. 468. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THESE Volumes, by one of the most popular novelists of the day, have doubtless ere this been perused and admired by the great mass of our readers. We have always been favorably impressed with the good moral tendency of all of Mr. JAMES' tales, as well as the easy style in which they are clothed, and the deep interest which they excite. Though not peculiarly happy in portraying nice shades of character, he is always successful in marking out a bold outline, and preserving its consistency and keeping throughout. He is, in our judgment, particularly forcible and impressive in developing and describing the more universal feelings of our nature; the ordinary currents of human thought; those impulses and affections, in short, which are common to all mankind. He frequently begins his chapters with abstract reflections, illustrated by the most happy comparisons, which possess the merit of being apposite, and consonant with the case in hand, while they exhibit the point and apothegm of La Bruyére, and the simplicity and truthfulness of Addison. To illustrate this remark, we quote the following passage:

"The prudent plans and purposes of the most prudent and politic people in this world are almost all contingent; contingent, in the first place, upon circumstances, the great rulers of all earthly things, and, in the second place, not less than the first, upon the characters, thoughts, and feelings of the very persons who frame them. Many a one may be tempted to tell us that it must be a prudent man to form prudent resolutions, and that such a prudent man will keep them; but now the reverse of this commonplace reasoning is directly the case, and the most prudent determinations are but too often taken by the most imprudent people, and violated without the slightest ceremony or contrition. This is, indeed, almost universally the case; for really prudent people have no need to make resolutions at all, and those who make them have almost always some intimation in their own mind that there is a likelihood of their being broken."

"The rock which it meets with in its course turns the impetuous river from the way it was pursuing, even when it comes down in all the fury of the mountain torrent. The slight slope of a green hill, the rise of a grassy bank at an after-period, bends the calm stream hither and thither through the plains, offering the most beautiful image of the effect of circumstances on the course of human life. Some streams also become colored by the earth they pass over, or mingle readily with the waters that flow into theirs. But there are a few-and they are always the mightiest and most profoundwhich retain their original hue and character, receive the tribute of other streams, pass over rocks and mountains, and through the midst of deep lakes, without the Rhone losing its glossy blue in the bosom of Lake Leman, or the Rhine mingling its clear stream with the waters of Constance or the current of the Maine.

"The firm and powerful mind may be affected in its operations by circumstances, but not in its nature, and the depths of original character remain unchanged from the beginning to the end of life. Even strong feelings in such hearts, like objects cast upon a grand and rapid river, are borne along with the current through all scenes and circumstances, till with the waters themselves they plunge into the ocean of eternity."

The story of Henry of Guise is laid in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Henry III. of France, and the Wars of the League. The leading events are historically true.

It would occupy too much of the space allotted to this department of the KNICKERBOCKER, to give a full analysis of the story; and we must confine ourselves to a few general remarks. Charles of Montsoreau, the hero, at least of the love, if not of the action of the tale, is a pleasant specimen of humanity in the abstract, and meets with many sad mishaps, and performs many noble deeds, that make us wonder why virtue in this world finds so much trouble in obtaining its reward; but like most of JAMES' personages, he lacks that strong Shakspearian individuality of character, which is essential in exciting deep personal interest. The Abbé de Boisguerin, the Marplot of the story, is a good specimen of an abstract villain, and so is Villequier; but they are cast in the same mould; they act and think alike; and it is their different position, only, that makes any difference in their respective characters. Not so with Shakspeare's or Scott's villains. Iago and Varney are each thorough-paced rascals, yet so peculiar, that they stand out by themselves, as it were; natural, yet unique; consistent, yet defying all competition. There is an easy flow, however, in Mr. JAMES' novels, which bears us on, perhaps more pleasantly than a wilder current. His descriptions of scenery are vivid; his detail of events is striking; and his plot is well digested and well developed. We always arise from the perusal of his works not only amused, but improved; not merely entertained, but instructed.

THE POET'S TRIBUTE. POEMS OF WILLIAM B. TAPPAN. In one volume. pp. 322. Boston: D. S. KING, and CROCKER AND BREWSTER. New-York: GEORGE W. LIGHT, Fulton-street.

MR. TAPPAN has been long before the public as a 'fugitive' poet, and many of his brief occasional pieces have won deservedly high commendation. He has always manifested the strictest regard to the moral and religious tendency of his verse; devoting his talents, in almost every effort of his pen, to the inculcation of good lessons. Oftentimes, his versification is melodious, and altogether felicitous; yet we are constrained to say, he seems occasionally to have written, not so much from impulse, as habit. Crudeness and unripe thoughts must needs sometimes follow. The volume under notice opens with 'The Good Wine,' which deserves the place of honor it occupies. It was originally written, as well as several other poems in the present collection, for the KNICKERBOCKER. For this reason, it is not necessary that we should call special attention to Mr. TAPPAN's merits as a poet. Conceding, therefore, that he has not gained repute without adequate desert, we must nevertheless caution him against the very common fault of writing too much. He now and then forces a sentiment, and pumps up a feeling, simply because the gods have made him poetical, and not because he feels the divine afflatus. With none but the kindest feelings toward Mr. TAPPAN, we must be permitted to cite a few examples of the composition from which we draw this conclusion. Take, as an instance, the beginning of the second poem, "The Choir :'

We cannot 'admire at such prosaic lines as these, however cordially we may commend others, from the same source. They remind us too forcibly of WORDSWORTH'S satirist, in the 'Old Cumberland Pedlar' of 'Warreniana :'

VOL. XV.

'Come, Timms, and you too, Stokes,
Come, sit you down upon this bank of fresh
And bilious butter-cups; 't is scarcely seven,
And I shall not drink tea till half past eight,
Or peradventure nine!'

10

Something of this familiar style may be seen in the annexed sentence from 'The Child of the Tomb:'

'Meanwhile, the recreant teacher, where was he?

Gone in effrontery to take his tea

With the boy's mother!'

The same imitation of WORDSWORTH's minute simplicity, merely, may be seen in the opening of 'The Silent Street:'

'In Boston is a street, about a rod

From her famed Common,' etc.

And again in 'Mortality and Immortality,' Mr. TAPPAN tells us:

'I saw some workmen toil, the other day;

"T was in Saint Mary's church-yard:

they had digged a vault

Some six feet square, and more than twice that depth !"

We have cited these instances, to show that Mr. TAPPAN Owes it to his fair fame, as a poet, to write less hastily, and always to give to good thoughts the best of words. Does he not see how a single prosaic line, like those we have instanced, would have affected such a beautiful poem as the one upon the twenty thousand children of our Sabbath schools, celebrating the Fourth of July at Staten Island, and commencing :

'Oh, sight sublime! oh, sight of fear!
The shadowing of infinity-
Numbers! whose murmur rises here,
Like whisperings of the mighty sea!
Ye bring strange vision to my gaze;

Earth's dreamer, heaven before me swims;
The sea of glass, the throne of days,

Crowns, harps, and the melodious hymns!'

Many other examples might be given of Mr. TAPPAN's ability to write admirable poetry, when he composes deliberately, and revises carefully. We commend 'The Poet's Tribute' to the reader, as a work well calculated to awaken and stimulate the better emotions of the heart. We should not omit to add, that the volume is handsomely printed and bound, and embellished with a likeness, in mezzo-tint, of the author, and a tasteful vignette landscape. It would form an appropriate 'tribute' to a friend, in this season of presents and tokens of affection.

LETTERS FROM THE OLD WORLD. BY A LADY OF NEW-YORK. In two volumes, 12mo. pp. 643. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THESE letters from Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine, Turkey and Greece, following in the wake of STEPHENS' delightful 'Incidents of Travel' in the same regions, come before the public subject, it must be confessed, to a trying comparison. But they will sustain it to the general content. They appear to have been written by an industrious and careful observer; one who seizes upon, and records faithfully, pretty much all that occurs, or is seen, during an interesting tour. Although there is not always apparent a due discrimination between salient points and tame platitude; striking incidents and minute detail; or between peculiar characteristics and common attributes; there is yet, undeniably, much entertainment in the work. Indeed, its faults are comparatively few, and such, moreover, as are common to most writers of travels. We need not commend the volumes to our readers; since the fair and accomplished authoress has been sending out literary letters of credit, for several months, through the columns of the 'New-York American' daily journal.

VOICES OF THE NIGHT. BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. In one volume. pp. 144. Cambridge: JOHN OWEN.

PERHAPS it will be considered altogether a work of supererogation, that we should invite the attention of our readers to a volume of poems from the pen of Professor LONGFELLow, from whom they have heard so often, and never without delight; and we confess there seems something worth heeding in the objection: yet we cannot avoid saying, that beside the several 'Psalms of Life' (not inappropriately named, in another sense than that of the writer, for they will live,) — there are numerous earlier poems and translations of the author, among which we find several of the most finished productions of his pen. Such, especially, are the ode from the Spanish of DON JORGE MANRIQUE, one of the most solemn and pathetic dirges we have ever read in any language, 'An April Day,' and the lines to 'Autumn,' all of which have become thoroughly domiciliated in the national heart. Although we may well doubt whether these pages will meet the eye of a single reader who is not familiar with the easy flow of Professor LONGFELLOW's verse, and his fine ear for its music, yet we cannot resist the inclination to transcribe the first six stanzas of the 'Prelude' to the volume under notice:

PLEASANT it was, when woods were green,

And winds were soft and low,

To lie amid some sylvan scene,

Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen,

Alternate come and go:

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves,
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves,
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms up-lifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,

With one continuous sound:

A slumberous sound a sound that brings
The feelings of a dream-

As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow murmur rings

O'er meadow, lake, and stream.
And dreams of that which cannot die,
Bright visions, came to me,
As lapped in thought I used to lie,
And gaze into the summer sky,
Where the sailing clouds went by,
Like ships upon the sea:

Dreams, that the soul of youth engage,
Ere Fancy has been quelled;
Old legends of the monkish page,
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And chronicles of Eld.

The same evidences of an attentive perusal of the volume of nature, that 'universal and public manuscript, that lies expansed unto the eyes of all,' may be traced throughout the book before us: nor should we do the author justice, did we omit to add, that his passing records of human cares, affections, and aspirations, are not less life-like and striking. Let no modern bardling, who fancies that he soars high, because he is out of sight in a mist, imagine that in the occasional figurative, German-like passages of Mr. LONGFELLOW, he discerns a precedent for turning his own intellectual tread-mill, which, having nothing to act upon, grinds the wind. The reader needs but the mood, to appreciate every shade of thought and feeling which is here developed. And we cannot better close our brief and imperfect notice, than by remarking of this very beautiful volume, as of its predecessor, 'Hyperion,' in the language of an old English worthy, that 'a book is little worth, if it deserves to be perused but once. As the same landscape appears differently at different seasons of the year, at morning and at evening, in bright weather and in cloudy, by moonlight and at noon-day, so does the same book produce a very different effect upon the same reader at different times, and under different circumstances.' Most cordially do we commend these 'Voices of the Night' to the imaginations and hearts of our readers. They will find them full of

EDITORS' TABLE.

JANUARY.-The same imaginative friend who somewhile since invaded the presence. chamber, and left behind him that earnest remonstrance with surly December, (administering a gentle kick, in his declining fortunes, to assist him down hill,) which graced our last number, has again been tampering with our grey-hound; for on entering the sanctum, on the first morning that rose upon this present year when but for you, good reader, we should have been giving and receiving, and enjoying with wonted zest, the customary congratulations and hilarity of the season we found our graceful iron quadruped 'holding on,' with characteristic tenacity, to the annexed, which we endorse, and complacently set forth on the road to posterity: "The town-clock, like a faithful chronicler, had just begun to syllable the last hour of the year, when that respectable ancient, TIME, summoned a cabinet council. It was a bitter and gloomy December night. Old Boreas had marshalled in the skies a dark phalanx of angry clouds, which he had recruited to his banner in Labrador, and other outlandish regions; and a kinsman of his, whose realm is in the north-west, near the Lake of the Woods, and who ruleth even to the arctic seas, added a reinforcement of heavy battalions, in black Russian caps. Indeed, there was that night a fearful gathering and mighty strife of the elements; and Ocean, joining in the universal din, called forth his hosts of waves from their briny caverns, and sent them up, hissing defiance to the winds of heaven. In this dark and boisterous midnight, on the verge of the blackest cloud that overhangs the wild and stormy Cape Hatteras, old Time sits in council, with 'hooded clouds for a pavilion round about him,' saying 'mass for the dying year.' The shrieks of drowning mariners, which he drinks in with a grim smile, is the only music of that vast and solemn cathedral. The restless old tyrant, who gives himself no leisure for repose or debate, strides into the assembly of his ministers, with the perspiration freezing upon his wrinkled brow, and stiffening his hoary locks; and with his huge scythe, reeking with the blood of thousands, and greedy for more victims, hastily slung over his broad shoulders, and awkwardly encumbering his person, as if unused to such idle conclaves. His ministers, the Months, are around him, with their various emblems of office, Turning to DECEMBER, who at the moment held the keys of authority, and the reins of the elements, he saith, somewhat sternly; 'Faithful, yet too zealous servant! wherefore dost thou suffer thy slaves, the elements, to lash the earth with such inconsiderate fury? It is not our will that it be totally annihilated, nor its sinful inhabitants reduced to utter despair. Time is not their enemy, but punisheth only for their abuse of his favors. We destroy the blossom, but we spare the seed; we cut down the stem, but we protect the root. We delight not in destruction for its own sake, but only to make room and aliment for new life and beauty, throughout the earth. Our scythe is not the instrument of Hate, but of Love; and we cherish and protect the bud and blossom of the rose, with the same care that we gather its falling and withered leaves. Stern as we are, we know and rejoice, while we lay low the pride and glory of the earth, that its desolation is but temporary. Restrain thy wrath, therefore, and moderate this fierce extremity of the elements; or zether since thou art perhaps too much flushed with victory to control thy temper, it is