Her re

times as though, through weakness of the to those who loved it as much for Mrs. body, her wings were tied :

Browning's sake as for its own. " When I attain to utter forth in verse

flection remains and must ever remain; Some inward thought, my soul throbs audi- for, bly

" while she rests, her songs in troops Along my pulses, yearning to be free,

Walk up and down our earthly slopes, And something farther, fuller, higher re Companioned by diviner hopes."

hearse, To the individual true, and the universe, The Italians have shown much feeling at In consummation of right harmony!

the loss which they, too, have sustained, But, like a wind-exposed, distorted tree, more than might have been expected, when We are blown against forever by the curse it is considered that few of them are conWhich breathes through Nature. Oh, the

versant with the English language, and world is weak;

that to those few English poetry (Byron The effluence of each is false to all; Add what we best conceive, we fail to

excepted) is unknown.

A battalion of the National Guard was speak! Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,

to have followed Mrs. Browning's remains And then resume thy broken strains, and

to the grave, had not a misunderstanding seek

as to time frustrated this testimonial of Fit peroration without let or thrall!” respect. The Florentines have expressed The “ashen garments" have fallen,

great interest in the young boy, Tuscan

born, and have even requested that he " And though we must have and have had

should be educated as an Italian, when Right reason to be earthly sad, Thou Poet-God art great and glad!”

any career in the new Italy should be open

to him. Though this offer will not be It was meet that Mrs. Browning should accepted, it was most kindly meant, and come home to die in her Florence, in her shows with what reverence Florence reCasa Guidi, where she had passed her gards the name of Browning. Mrs. Brownhappy married life, where her boy was ing's friends are anxious that a tablet to born, and where she had watched and re- her memory should be placed in the Florjoiced over the second birth of a great entine Pantheon, the Church of Santa nation. Her heart-strings did not entwine Croce. It is true she was not a Romanist, themselves around Rome as around Flor- neither was she an Italian, - yet she was ence, and it seems as though life had been Catholic, and more than an Italian. Her 80 eked out that she might find a lasting genius and what she has done for Italy sleep in Florence. Rome holds fast its entitle her to companionship with Galileo, Shelley and Keats, to whose lowly graves Michel Angelo, Dante, and Alfieri. The there is many a reverential pilgrimage ; friars who have given their permission for and now Florence, no less honored, has the erection of a monument to Cavour in its shrine sacred to the memory of Theo- Santa Croce ought willingly to make room dore Parker and Elizabeth Barrett Brown- for a tablet on which should be inscribed, ing:

The present Florence is not the Florence SHE SANG THE SONG OF ITALY. of other days. It can never be the same SHE WROTE "AURORA LEIGH."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. four hundred messages were actually trans- scription of the Electrical Influence of the mitted : one hundred and twenty-nine from Aurora Borealis upon the Working of the Valentia to Trinity Bay, and two hundred Telegraph. These, with a curiously inand seventy-one from Trinity Bay to Va. teresting chapter upon the Various Applilentia. The curious reader may find cop- cations of the Telegraph, and an amusing ies of all these messages chronologically miscellaneous chapter showing that the set down in this volume. Mr. Prescott ex- Telegraph has a literature of its own, presses entire confidence in the restoration complete the chief popular elements of the of telegraphic communication between the volume. The remainder is devoted maintwo hemispheres. It may be reasonably ly to a technical treatise on the proper doubted, however, if direct submarine com- method of constructing telegraphic lines, munication will ever be resumed. Two perfecting insulation, etc. In an Appendix other routes are suggested as more likely we have a more careful consideration of to become the course of the international Galvanism, and a more detailed examinawires. One is that lately examined by Sir tion of the qualities and capacities of the Leopold M'Clintock and Captain Young, various batteries. under the auspices of the British Govern- As is becoming in any, and especially ment. This route, taking the extreme north- in an American, treatise upon this great ern coast of Scotland as its point of depart subject, Mr. Prescott devotes some space ure, and touching the Faroe Islands, Ice- to a detailed account of the labors of Proland, and Greenland, strikes our continent fessor Morse, which have led to his being upon the coast of Labrador, making the regarded as the father of our American longest submarine section eight hundred system of telegraphing. In a chapter en. miles, about one-third the length of the At- titled “Early Discoveries in Electro-Dy. lantic cable. There is not a little doubt, namics,” he publishes for the first time however, as to the practicability of this some interesting facts elicited during the route; and as the British Government has trial, in the Supreme Court of the United already expended several hundred thou- States, of the suit of the Morse patentees sand pounds in experimenting upon sub- against the House Company for alleged marine cables, it is not likely that it will infringement of patent. In this chapter venture much more upon any project not we have a résumé of the evidence before holding out a very absolute promise of suc- the Court, and an abstract of the decision cess. What seems more likely is, that our of Judge Woodbury. This leads clearly telegraphic communication with Europe to the conclusion, that, although Professor will be made eventually through Asia. Morse had no claims to any merit of actual Even now the Russian Government is vig. invention, yet he had the purely mechanical orously pushing its telegraphic lines east- merit of having gone beyond all his comward from Moscow; and its own interest peers in the application of discoveries and affords a strong guaranty that telegraphic inventions already made, and that he was communication will soon be established be- the first to contrive and set in operation a tween its commercial metropolis and its thoroughly effective instrument. military and trading posts on the Pacific Mr. Prescott has produced a very read. border. A project has also recently taken able and useful book. It has been thor. form to establish a line between Quebec oughly and appropriately illustrated, and and the Hudson Bay Company's posts north is a very elegant specimen of the typog. of the Columbia River. With the two ex- rapher's art. tremes so near meeting, a submarine wire would soon be laid over Behring's Straits, or crossing at a more southern point and Great Erpectations. By CHARLES Dicktouching the Aleutian Islands in its pas- ENS. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & sage.

Brothers. 8vo. Two of the chapters of this work will be recognized by readers of the “ Atlantic" The very title of this book indicates the as having first appeared in its pages, - confidence of conscious genius. In a new chapter upon the Progress and Present aspirant for public favor, such a title might Condition of the Electric Telegraph in the have been a good device to attract attenvarious countries of the world, and a de- tion; but the most famous novelist of the

a

day, watched by jealous rivals and critics, taposition of romantic tenderness, melocould hardly have selected it, had he not dramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. inwardly felt the capacity to meet all the The humorous characterization is joyousexpectations he raised. We have read it, ly exaggerated into caricature, - the serias we have read all Mr. Dickens's pre- ous characterization into romantic unrevious works, as it appeared in instalments, ality. Richard Swiveller and Little Nell and can testify to the felicity with which refuse to combine. There is abundant expectation was excited and prolonged, evidence of genius both in the humorous and to the series of surprises which ac- and the pathetic parts, but the artistic imcompanied the unfolding of the plot of the pression is one of anarchy rather than story. In no other of his romances has unity. the author succeeded so perfectly in at In “Great Expectations," on the cononce stimulating and baffling the curiosity trary, Dickens seems to have attained the of his readers. He stirred the dullest minds mastery of powers which formerly more to guess the secret of his mystery; but, so or less mastered him. He has fairly disfar as we have learned, the guesses of his covered that he cannot, like Thackeray, most intelligent readers have been almost narrate a story as if he were a mere lookas wide of the mark as those of the least er-on, a mere “knowing” observer of apprehensive. It has been all the more what he describes and represents; and he provoking to the former class, that each has therefore taken observation simply as surprise was the result of art, and not of the basis of his plot and his characterizatrick; for a rapid review of previous chap- tion.

As we read “

Vanity Fair” and ters has shown that the materials of a “ The Newcomes,” we are impressed with strictly logical development of the story the actuality of the persons and incidents. were freely given. Even after the first, There is an absence both of directing idesecond, third, and even fourth of these sur- as and disturbing idealizations. Everyprises gave their pleasing electric shocks thing drifts to its end, as in real life. In to intelligent curiosity, the dénouement was “Great Expectations” there is shown a still hidden, though confidentially fore- power of external observation finer and told. The plot of the romance is therefore deeper even than Thackeray's; and yet, universally admitted to be the best that owing to the presence of other qualities, Dickens has ever invented. Its leading the general impression is not one of obevents are, as we read the story consecu- jective reality. The author palpably uses tively, artistically necessary, yet, at the his observations as materials for his creasame time, the processes are artistically tive faculties to work upon; he does not concealed. We follow the movement of record, but invents; and he produces somea logic of passion and character, the real thing which is natural only under condipremises of which we detect only when tions prescribed by his own mind. He we are startled by the conclusions. shapes, disposes, penetrates, colors, and

The plot of “Great Expectations” is contrives everything, and the whole acalso noticeable as indicating, better than tion is a series of events which could any of his previous stories, the individu- have occurred only in his own brain, and ality of Dickens's genius. Everybody which it is difficult to conceive of as ac. must have discerned in the action of his tually “happening.” And yet in none of mind two diverging tendencies, which, in his other works does he evince a shrewder this novel, are harmonized. He possesses insight into real life, and a clearer percepa singularly wide, clear, and minute pow- tion and knowledge of what is called “the er of accurate observation, both of things world.” The book is, indeed, an artistic and of persons; but his observation, keen creation, and not a mere succession of and true to actualities as it independently humorous and pathetic scenes, and deis, is not a dominant faculty, and is op- monstrates that Dickens is now in the posed or controlled by the strong tenden- prime, and not in the decline of his great cy of his disposition to pathetic or hu- powers. morous idealization. Perhaps in “ The The characters of the novel also show Old Curiosity Shop" these qualities are how deeply it has been meditated; for, best seen in their struggle and diver. though none of them may excite the pergence, and the result is a magnificent jux. sonal interest which clings to Sam Weller