its most delightful lineaments. We are glad to find Mr. Griswold thus appreciating the higher part of a character in which all is excellent and all is lovely:

"Miss Sedgewick has marked individuality. She commands as much respect by her virtues as she does admiration by her talents. Indeed, the rare endowments of her mind depend in an unusual degree upon the moral qualities with which they are united for their value. She writes with a higher object than merely to amuse. Animated by a cheerful philosophy, and anxious to pour its sunshine into every place where there is lurking care or suffering, she selects for illustration the scenes of every-day experience, paints them with exact fidelity, and seeks to diffuse over the mind a delicious serenity, and in the heart kind feelings and sympathies, and wise ambition and steady hope. A truly American spirit pervades her works. She speaks of our country as one "where the government and institutions are based on the gospel principle of equal rights and equal privileges to all," and denies that honor and shame depend upon condition. She is the champion of the virtuous poor, and, selecting her heroes and heroines from humble life, does not deem it necessary that by tricks upon them in the cradle they have been only temporarily banished from a patrician caste and estate to which they were born.

"Her style is colloquial, picturesque, and marked by a facile grace which is evidently a gift of nature. Her characters are nicely drawn and delicately contrasted. Her Deborah Lenox has remarkable merit as a creation and as an impersonation, and it is perfectly indigenous. The same can be said of several others. Miss Sedgewick's delineations of New England manners are decidedly the best that have appeared, and show both a careful study and a just appreciation."

We are happy also to agree with the present editor in our estimate of the historical novels of Dr. Bird, especially the novel of "Calavar;" but Mr. Griswold has not observed his entire and hopeless inferiority in other classes of fiction, when he who was dignified, brilliant and classical, becomes commonplace, tedious and inelegant. The reason of the difference appears to be that the talent of the author lies not in the delineation of character, not in humor, nor in narrative, but in costume, picturesque impression and dramatic effect. "Calavar and The Infidel," says Mr. Griswold, in his introduction, "were the first novels of Dr. Bird, and there are few American readers who need to be informed of their character or desert; though, as their accomplished author has been so long in retirement, the inference is reasonable that their reception was equal neither to their merits nor his expectations. Dr. Bird has great dramatic power, and

has shown in several instances considerable ability in the portraiture of character. His historical romances are deserving of that title. His scenes and events from actual life are presented with graphic force and an unusual fidelity. He had the rare merit of understanding his subjects as perfectly as it was possible to do so by the most persevering and intelligent study of all accessible authorities; and in the works I have mentioned has written in an elevated and effective style."

Of Mr. Kennedy, the author of "Horse-Shoe Robinson," etc., Mr. Griswold has spoken more highly, we think, than an unbiassed examination of his writings would justify. Of Mr. Paulding he says with considerable felicity :

"Mr. Paulding's writings are distinguished for a decided nationality. He has had no respect for authority unsupported by reason, but on all subjects has thought and judged for himself. He has defended our government and institutions, and has imbodied what is peculiar in our manners and opinions. There is hardly a character in his works who would not in any country be instantly recognized as an American. He is unequalled in a sort of quaint and whimsical humor, but occasionally falls into the common error of thinking there is humor in epithets, and these are sometimes coarse or vulgar. Humor is a quality of feeling and action, and like any sentiment or habit, should be treated in a style which indicates a sympathy with it. He who pauses to invent its dress will usually find his invention exhausted before he attempts its body. He seems generally to have no regular schemes and premeditated catastrophies. He follows the lead of a free fancy, and writes down whatever comes into his mind. He creates his characters, and permits circumstances to guide their conduct. Perhaps the effects of this random and discursive spirit are more natural than those of a strict regard to unities. It is a higher achievement to maintain an interest in a character than to fasten the attention to a plot."

Mr. Dana may be considered as standing at the head of the literary men of New England; and as being, past all question, one of the brightest, purest and highest intelligences that this land has yet produced. The delicacy of his mental perceptions, the strength of his reflective powers and the richness of his genius in composition, render him almost unrivalled in the high field of the philosophy of criticism, and in the department of art have made him especially able to trace with a learned eye, the law of that mysterious process by which, as in the case of Allston and of all who have reached the heights of genius, spiritual sensibility passed into an exalted æsthetic power under the animating

guidance of thoughtful self-control. In regard to his mental characteristics, Mr. Dana may be called the American Coleridge. There is the same union of the keenest intellectual subtlety-the most piercing philosophical analysis—with the wealth and glory of practical imagination. Looking at life and nature with the same blending of the moralist's with the artist's view, both of these remarkable men habitually regarded truth as the beauty of reason, and beauty as the truth of taste. As in the case of Coleridge, Mr. Dana's views and discoveries have been chiefly communicated in conversation-by living action upon the understandings of those who afterwards, in their most shining displays, have only reflected the rays of his intelligence. Hence his public reputation, great as it is and always was, has been of a reflective and secondary sort; that is to say, it rested not so much upon any actual impression which the public had received from Mr. Dana's productions, as upon the testimony of an intermediate class of writers and students, who have appreciated his merit and propagated his fame. He has been more the author of authors, than the author of the public. The greatness of such men becomes known, as the ores of Mount Truolus were discovered, from the golden particles that were borne along with the current that passed by.

In Mr. Griswold's estimate of the characteristics of the author of "The Idle Man," there is just perception and discrimination.

"The strength of Mr. Dana lies very much in the union of sentiment with imagination, or perhaps in an ascendency of sentiment over his other faculties. It is this which makes every character of his so actual, as if he entered into each with his own conscience, and in himself suffered the victories over the will, and the remorse which follows them. There are beautiful touches of fancy in his tales; but, as in his poems, the fancy is inferior and subject to the imagination. He has a solemn sense of the grandeur and beauty of nature, and his descriptions, sometimes by a single sentence, have remarkable vividness and truth. His observations on society are particular and profound, and he brings his characters before us with singular facility and distinctness, and invests them, to our view, with the dignity and destiny of immortal beings. His mind is earnest, serious and benevolent, delicately susceptible of impressions of beauty, and apt to dwell upon the ideal and spiritual. Its characteristics pervade his style, which is pure English, and has a certain antique energy about it, and an occasional simple but deep pathos, which is sure to awaken a kindred feeling in the mind of the reader."

Mr. Griswold has scarcely spoken with sufficient distinctness and emphasis of the extraordinary merit of Allston's "Monaldi," as a work of fiction. The wonderful mind which was oftener and so perfectly exhibited by the pencil, was here revealed, not indeed upon a great scale, but with entireness of moral and intellectual effect. Indeed, we may say that it is as perfect a picture as Mr. Allston ever painted; for the genius which it displays, though employing "the instrument of words," is essentially pictorial in its character and impression. We may apply to it the criticism made in the work itself of a picture of the crucifixion by an old artist: "Though eccentric and somewhat capricious, it was yet full of powerful expression, and marked by a vigor of execution that made every thing around it look like washed drawings." The various persons of the tale are not revealed to us by an illumination seemingly proceeding from the author's mind, but flash their characteristics upon us with a vividness which almost renders us uncomfortable by its nearness and force. To display the operation of the passions with that intensity and clearness which his plan contemplated, it was necessary to represent the subjects of the narrative as endowed with sensibilities very greatly more susceptible and active than ordinary people; yet with consummate skill these characters are held firmly to nature and probability. Nothing is morbid or overwrought; but all healthful, genuine and actual. To exhibit a series of telescopic views which, though greatly magnified, are never indistinct, and which first studied inseparate particularly, are afterward reduced to a common centre and point of view, is a surprising exhibition of genius and skill. Indeed, we venture to suggest, that scarcely any work in modern times, if properly examined, would exhibit the resources of literary art more wonderfully than the tale of "Monaldi."

In speaking of Mr. Allston's moral nature, we ought not in fact to separate his literary productions from the revelations of his pencil. Mr. Griswold appears to be fully conscious of this. The opportunity which the period that has elapsed since Allston's death, has afforded of weighing, coolly and comparatively, the opinions formed of his abilities during his life, has confirmed

the impression that his genius was superior, not only to all that has appeared in this country, but to anything that can be found in Europe, until you get back to the great immortal names of Italian glory, the heroes of art, the half-divine. No man ever had juster, deeper, clearer views of the character of art, and the splendor of his success as a painter, is principally due to the fidelity with which he worked out that conception, within himself. and in his works. He understood the nature of art as it exists, distinguished from a transcription of the real, on the one hand, and from a metaphysical idea on the other. He had apprehended, with a profound insight, the relation which a spirit and temper of art bear to moral virtue; the fine, but vital links, by which it is allied to all that is good and all that is lovely in human sentiment and human conduct; he felt the purity of its profession and the dignity of its practice. Mr. Griswold informs us that a memoir of the life of Allston is now in the course of preparation by his brother-in-law Mr. Dana. We hope that this statement is not mistaken nor premature. The dissemination of views like Allston's upon art, under the living illustration of a career so beautifully true to that worship of excellence in art, to which early love had deepened, in the bosom of this elevated man, would be of inappreciable value at this time in its influence on literary and pictorial art in the United States, and upon the characters of those who profess it. It would raise and illumine their aspirations. It would teach them what to desire, and how to strive for it. There is abundance of intellectual action and of willing energy of mind in this country; but it is essentially uninstructed as to the objects of its interest, and the nature of the service which it professes. It has not been told of the character of that Unknown God whom it ignorantly worships. In Allston was seen the true artist; one to whom the ineffable beauty had been revealed, and whose soul that sight had forever rapt and consecrated; thenceforth his vowed and single purpose was to reproduce that celestial vision in forms of existence, of thought, and of feeling-to develop the infinite from beneath the disguises of the actual, and shed around the things of time those rays which are a lustre of eternity.