1853.] Notices of Recent Publications. 473 An Address in Commemoration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of Lancaster, Massachusetts. By. JOSEPH WILLARD. With an Appendix. Boston: Printed by John Wilson & Son, 22 School Street. 1853, 8vo. pp. 230. It is fortunate for our country that a commemorative spirit has pervaded it so early. The clouds of error and fable will be dispelled from its origin and primitive annals, and its entire growth, and the full benefit of its example, will be brought to view. Scarcely two centuries have elapsed since the settlement of the American colonies, and our literature is already preeminently rich in its historical department. In what is commonly regarded as the higher walk of history, embracing a wide sphere and developing great events and comprehensive movements, many works have appeared commanding universal approval. But narratives of the rise and progress of nations and governments can only reach the highest order of merit, by resulting from a minute, exact, and thorough survey of materials in detail, which themselves cannot find room in any general history, and must be provided by numerous other hands. The sources of a philosophical review and comprehensive exhibition of events and stages of national progress or decline are to be found in local annals and anecdotes of men and things, scattered in special memoirs and separate publications of various kinds. These must be derived from writings of a limited and unpretending character, drawing their interest and value from the minuteness of their details, which, in fact, are interesting and valuable just in proportion as they descend to particulars, conduct us into the recesses of society, and reveal to view the veritable form and shape of things, the idiom, fashion, personal manners, costume, and all most familiar habitudes of ordinary every-day experience in common life. It is from such writings that the genius of history is to gather its inspiration. It is such writings that give the real impress of the times, and disclose the secret and preliminary workings, in the interior of society and the heart of the people, of motives, tendencies, principles, and passions, which finally consummate their action in the career of heroes, statesmen, and sages, in the revolutions of dynasties, and in the power and glory of nations. The commemorative age having fairly begun among us, the fountains of such local, personal, and minute histories are everywhere opened. Narratives of the origin and humble annals of villages and towns, sketches of early manners and customs, memoirs of the olden time full of local traditions and piquant personal anecdotes, are pouring forth from all quarters. The entire past of our country, over its whole surface, is thus rising to view and returning to life before us. The lessons of their own immediate and peculiar history, with the inspiring influence that proceeds from them, are hereby secured to our people, and everywhere brought to bear upon their genius and character. The preparation is getting to be complete. The field is ripening for the harvest, and will soon be ready to be reaped by the great historian. Considerations like these lead us to appreciate the importance of such occasions as that commemorated in the work before us, and the value of the publications to which they give rise. Although the Address of Mr. Willard nominally belongs to the department of primary and local history just described, and has all the interest peculiar and appropriate to its class, it also possesses the value, and often rises to the dignity, of the most comprehensive and philosophical works. We would instance the view presented of the rise of Nonconformity, in separation from the church establishment of the mother country, and of Puritanism within its bosom, of the gradual working of those principles until they convulsed the fabric of the Old World, and infused their indestructible elements and irresistible energies into the everexpansive and progressive body and soul of society in the New World. We would also instance his clear and discriminating exhibition of the wisdom and necessity of the rigid, unbending, unflinching state policy of the Massachusetts colonial leaders, preserving the integrity of their administration from internal or external encroachment, from antagonistic elements within, and the interference of the government of the mother country with out. The treatment of these topics by Mr. Willard is masterly, and places him on a level with the highest order of historians. The purity, simplicity, strength, and elegance of the style of the Address give to it a classical character. We confidently commend it as a model production of its class, in both manner and matter. The portraits of the several clergymen of Lancaster are among the most valuable portions of the work. Those persons who had the privilege of an intimate acquaintance with the late reverend and excellent Dr. Thayer, for instance, cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary skill with which his fine character is portrayed. It is as honorable to the discernment of the truthful artist, as it is to the virtues and graces of the subject. We cannot refrain from expressing our high satisfaction at the manner in which the old town of Lancaster met the occasion, of which the volume before us itself, by the way, a most beautiful specimen of Boston typography is the record. 1853.] Notices of Recent Publications. 475 Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform. Chiefly from the Edinburgh Review, corrected, vindicated, enlarged, in Notes and Appendices. By SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, Bart. With an Introductory Essay. By ROBERT TURNBULL, D.D. New York: Harper & Broth ers. 1853. 8vo. pp. 764. THESE Essays of the most acute and the most distinguished metaphysical philosopher of the age, have been gathered together by himself from the pages in which most of them originally appeared. In general they deal with abstruse and difficult themes, though the themes themselves relate to matters nearest to us in their materials and interest. Like all other modern philosophers, Sir W. Hamilton finds a chief part of his task to lie in the work of criticizing the speculations and the conclusions of his predecessors. He is an admirable and a lucid critic, and the trial processes which he institutes must be acknowledged to be those of a peer. We do not feel competent to judge him, nor to pronounce an opinion upon his merits as an original thinker and theorist. The quality which we think of most account in a philosopher is that of intelligibleness in the expression of his thoughts. As we have read the productions of our author's pen in the Edinburgh, we have found him for the most part a lucid writer, and have been willing to account what has occasionally looked like obscurity to his profundity and to our own obtuseness. At any rate, we have understood him better than we understand a portion of the critique upon him in the "Prospective Review" for August. But there are Essays in the volume before us which task only the careful attention of the mind without perplexing it with abstruse processes. These are of a high and a most instructive character. Scotch common sense, experimental wisdom, and clear-headed sagacity are their marked characteristics. There is no single volume, treating the same subjects, which can compare in value with this. Isaac T. Hopper: a True Life. By L. MARIA CHILD. Boston J. P. Jewett & Co. 1853. 12mo. pp. 493. THE distinguished authoress might have added many other epithets on her title-page to characterize the Life which she has portrayed. It certainly was a unique, and a blameless, and a most useful life, which is here so delightfully delineated. It would have been hard to have prophesied, in view of the pranks of the young rogue whose mischievous doings are related in the early pages of this volume, that they were to open the career of one of the most devoted of philanthropists. Friend Hopper had a genius for serving his fellow-men in one particular way; — a sort of monomania of benevolence. The cases here given in which his sympathy and service were enlisted in behalf of colored people, present all possible varieties in their details; but as they were all brought into one category as involving outrages upon humanity, so they all found the shrewd Quaker ready to meet them with the aid of the one great law of love. Occasionally a reader is reminded of the proverbial slyness which is attributed to Friends, and thinks that he may be called upon to wink at some slight trespass upon the simplicity and directness of integrity. But there is nothing of the sort. Friend Hopper is always careful to leave a fair, unstained margin all round his transactions. The book is a treasure in its way, because alike of its subjectmatter and its incidental topics. Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan. By THOMAS MOORE. New York: Redfield. 1853. Two Volumes. 12mo. pp. 307, 335. WHILE Moore is himself passing before the literary world through criticisms and judgments called forth upon him by the publication of his Letters and Diary, Mr. Redfield has seized the opportunity to give us an American edition of the poet's Life of Sheridan. This will always be one of the stock biographies. The eccentric and erratic genius with whom it deals in a spirit quickened by some congeniality of nature, has secured for himself a place among "the immortals on the earth." Since the first publication of these Memoirs, their fidelity to truth has in a few points been impugned, and even up to this day, as a reader of that slashing article on Moore in the " Quarterly" will perceive, protests are entered against it. Nevertheless, to those who have learned how to read biographies, through some understanding of the processes by which they are manufactured, Moore's Life of Sheridan will not lose its value as a racy delin eation of a great wit and a great sinner. Those who read it for the first time will have in our recent literature many collateral illustrations of the times and the characters referred to in it. 1853.] Notices of Recent Publications. 477 Principles of Geology: or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, considered as illustrative of Geology. By SIR CHARLES LYELL, M.A., F.R.S. New and entirely revised Edition. Illustrated with Maps, Plates, and Wood-cuts. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1853. 8vo. pp. 834. THIS Volume supersedes and renders valueless the three volumes of a former edition of the same work which now rest upon our shelves. We certainly can find no fault with the author because, in treating of a demonstrative and a progressive science, he himself thus annuls or modifies some of the opinions which he had before announced. On the contrary, we are pleased to have this evidence supplied to us by a highly distinguished votary of the science of Geology, that there has been a boastfulness of assurance concerning its facts and deductions which circumstances have greatly abated. Our own interest in the perusal of works on this science has from the first been largely qualified by the oracular and presuming confidence which very many of the writers and the lecturers upon it have allowed themselves in their assertions, their generalizations, and their inferences. Sir Charles Lyell, with all his high and undeniable talents and attainments, has not been the least of the offenders on this score. After saying this, we must thank him for that careful and elaborate revision of his views and statements which he has given to the world in the ponderous English volume whose contents are here reprinted by the Messrs. Appleton. The distinguished author has for many years been an indefatigable student of his favorite theme. He has never trusted to report where he could exercise his own acute powers of observation. His constancy in research and his painstaking toil have resulted in making him a master in the science of Geology. His travels have enabled him to relieve the dryness of his pages by some fresh and incidental allusions to incidents of personal experience. He is himself so widely known that his book needs no indorsement. Lectures to Young Men. By WILLIAM G. ELIOT, JR., Pastor of the Church of the Messiah, St. Louis. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1854 [?]. 16mo. pp. 190. THIS little volume, filled with the fruits of practical experience gained in a devoted engagement in the labors of the Christian ministry, is a fitting companion to that, which we reviewed in our last number, which contained "Lectures to Young Women," by the same author. The subjects of the Lectures are," An Appeal: Self-Education: Leisure Time: Transgression: The |