as that Europe is on trial before America. To public opinion, worthy of the name, both ought to hold themselves amenable. But to any political assumption that our measures are to be judged or dictated by any foreign power, or by all foreign powers combined, our reply would be defiance. Thanks to a million of men in arms, to an iron-clad navy, and to our complete mastery of the emancipation question, Europe dare not intervene. And that is our sole safety. "Before Europe," the logic of our eloquent friend would not avail us a particle; but the iron demonstrations being put together in our navy yards have a Q. E. D. to them that Europe can perceive. We are masters of the position; and nothing is likely to defeat us but incompetent leadership in cabinet or field.

Belles-Lettres and Classical.

Poems, with Autobiographic and other Notes. Illustrated by DARLEY, HOPPIN, and others. By THOMAS H. STOCKTON, Chaplain to Congress. 12mo., pp. 321. Philadelphia: William S. and Alfred Martien. 1862. This volume contains poems written at various times between 1834 and 1861. It is furnished with eight picturesque illustrations, mostly being graphic shadows of the poetic images furnished by the author's fancy. Thirty pages are devoted to the notes, in which the author with freedom and simplicity gives an outline of the recollections of his life. The book was intended, he tells us, chiefly "for circulation among known friends; with some overflow of the edition in dreamy contemplation of possible unknown friends."

The poems are marked with the purity, devotion, and elevation which characterize the author's soul. No one can read a page without realizing that the writer views nature with the eye of a poet, and that nature to him is not only marked with the traces of God, but radiant with hues shed from the cross of Christ. Two extended poems occupy the first part; the first on Faith and Light, or the Spirit-world and Sense-world; the other, unfinished, on Snow, in which the imagination of the author chases that cold but poetic element through a variety of picturesque winter sceneries. We have a poem on "The Three Harps," namely, the Humble, the Plaintive, and the Joyful. "Genius" is a very ingenious performance. The remainder of this first part, consisting of poems in "rhythm," or blank verse, are brief.

In the second part we have poems in rhyme, all brief and occasional, called out by some suggestive thought or incident, and pos

sessing various degrees of merit. "Horseback on the Height" strikes us here as exhibiting the most of the genuine poet.

The third part consists of hymns, in which the author gives in simpler verse the natural expression of a true religious emotion. Most of these too were called forth by special occasions. It requires a peculiar power and a moment of wonderful inspiration to furnish a hymn which the general Church is willing to adopt and endow with permanent life. We looked for such with some expectation in these pages, but are not sure of having found the deathless strain.

There is a genuine poetry with none of its fiction in the simple detail which Stockton gives of the passages of his life. Singular that when he was taken from the Methodist Episcopal Church by our seceding friends of the Methodist Protestant Church, with his young talent just blooming into manly power, he "had never been requested to offer a prayer." Sad, too, it seems to us, that so unwonted a negligence on the part of the Church that should have developed him-unwonted, we say, for early Methodism was ever alert to bring out her retiring talent-lost him to us and us to him. He would have had, but for this, an ample regular range for his rare endowments, and we much doubt whether he would have been led into those trains of thought by which he has embraced that— shall we call it ?-conscientious crotchet, that denominational organizations are wrong. We have known some anti-denominational movements made in our experience, but they are infallibly involved in the contradiction of being simply an anti-sectarian sect. In spite of themselves they become the very thing they condemn, a denomination; or would so, if their self-contradictory and self-dissolving nature did not forbid.

Dr. Stockton intimates that he has ample materials for a full volume of reminiscence. When we review the range of rare association, ecclesiastical, political, literary, surrounded by which he has lived, it seems to us that it is in his power to furnish a work of no ordinary interest.

Beauties, Selected from the Writings of THOMAS DE QUINCY. 12mo., pp. 432. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

In an accidental colloquial rencounter, in his young manhood, with George III., De Quincy had the opportunity to inform royalty that his family was in England as early as the Conquest. One branch of the family emigrated to America, dropped the aristocratic prefix, and he is proud to specify Josiah Quincy in proof that its blood is not unhonored by its democratic branch. He might have added

that the name, at least, ascended the presidential chair, borne upon the person of one of the minority of incumbents whose character honored the position. He claims that the family is now "distributed among three mighty nations-France, America, and Englandand precisely those three that are usually regarded as the leaders of civilization." And this is in character. For whoever appreciates his native genius, his scholarly finish, the exquisite subtilty of his thought, his transparent and ever varying and richly variegated style, will readily affirm that none but an age of highest civilization could have produced a De Quincy.

The present volume presents an excellent selection from his works. It embraces his own Narrative of his early Life, Dreams, Narratives, Essays, Critiques and Remembrances, and Detached Gems.

Last Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With a Memorial by THEODORE TILTON. 18mo., pp. 242. New York: James Miller. 1862. Mrs. Browning is here done up in a style of imitation so close that we for some time imagined that we had in hand a regular specimen of the blue and gold of Ticknor & Fields. The "Memorial " by Theodore Tilton is in the peculiar living and brilliant style which indicate him as one of the most effective writers of the day. His enthusiasm for his subject is glowing; perhaps the man who does the criticism for the Independent might as truly attribute "adoration" to him as to a contributor on the same subject in our last Quarterly.

Mr. Tilton brings out very emphatically Mrs. Browning's earnest sympathy with the American antislavery cause. In America she would have stood foremost in the battle; and doubtless she would have been called upon to brave the obloquy which the northern minions of the southern despotism have poured upon every heroic spirit that has dared to stand for God and the right.

Miscellaneous.

The Tax-Payer's Manual, containing the Act of Congress imposing Direct and Excise Taxes, with complete marginal references, and an analytical index, showing all the items of taxation, the mode of proceeding, and the duties of the officers. With an explanatory preface. 8vo., pp. 128. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1862.

The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World. Showing who robbed him and who passed by him. By W. M. THACKERAY. With Illustrations. 8vo., pp. 266. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1862.

Health; its Friends and Foes. By R. D. MUSSEY, M., LL.D., late Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in Dartmouth College. 12mo., pp. 368. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. Cincinnati: G. S.

Blanchard. 1862.

First Book in Chemistry, for the use of Schools and Families. By WORTHINGTON HOOKER, M.D., Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine in Yale College. Illustrated by engravings. 8vo., pp. 231. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1862.

Pamphlets.

Martin Van Buren: Lawyer, Statesman, and Man. By WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER. 18mo., pp. 47. New York: Appleton & Co. 1862. No one can object to Mr. Butler's paying this graceful tribute of affectionate memory to his eminent departed friend. No one can reprehend his dwelling on the better points, and skillfully gliding over the indefensible. History will have a sterner task to perform. It will bring out a large share that Mr. Butler evades, and perhaps reverse some views he presents. To no one more than to Mr. Van Buren do we owe that partisan discipline which has rendered our politics a scramble for spoils, a game of unprincipled selfishness, which has enslaved all just public opinion, and placed our country at the mercy of a well-trained northern subterraneanism, and a controlling southern oligarchy. We are reaping in the present war the bitter fruits of that demoralization.

A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Policy of Count Cavour. Delivered in the Hall of the New York Historical Society, February, 1862. By VINCENZO BOTTA, Ph. D., Professor of Italian Literature in the New York University, late member of Parliament, and Professor of Philosophy in the College of Sardinia. 12mo., pp. 108. New York: G. P. Putnam. This eloquent tribute to a personage styled by the writer "the great statesman to whom my country is chiefly indebted for its national existence," was delivered before the body named in the title at the request of Bryant, Bancroft, and others of our most distinguished citizens. It was then requested for publication, and its character fully justifies the expectations of the public.

Want of room obliges us to postpone a full notice of "Facts for Priests and People."