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Woman's Wrongs: A Counter-Irritant. By GAIL HAMILTON. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

IT is the first business of the author of this sprightly little book to demolish the Rev. Dr. Todd, who some time ago printed a pamphlet on Woman's Rights, and told woman the usual things about her sphere, and her dependence, and her divinely established inferiority, and her sovereignty of the affections, and her general wickedness in making any effort except of the sort asked of Mrs. Dombey. Dr. Todd is such an intellectual chaos, that he had to be built up before being knocked over, and he seems in the end to be superfluously trampled upon. When our author has done with him, she enters upon much better work, namely, the discussion of woman's place in American society and polity. This topic she treats as impersonally and frankly and vigorously as any of our own clearheaded and abstractly thinking sex, and brings knowledge of social and political economy to bear upon it; while in saying that if she were a man she would not deny the right of suffrage to woman, and that being a woman she will not ask it, leaves the question in that doubt essential to the happiness of all seekers after truth. She questions whether the ballot would socially or morally elevate woman, seeing that the great mass of men are not so elevated by it; and she is sure that it would not increase or regulate wages, which are subject only to the laws of demand and supply, and cannot be reached by statute. Women, she shows, are no longer shut out from trades or professions, and they are ill-paid because they do slovenly half-work from want of skill. The author does not believe that the typical forty thousand starving seamstresses in New York would be at all filled by the ballot, but thinks they might be quite comfortable in domestic service, — which it is well to say, though the starving forty thousand will never hear to it. There is such a vast deal for women to do before they vote, that, while she believes every woman who desires to vote ought to vote now, she counsels her sex rather to strive for success in the businesses open to them than to dream of legislating themselves into well-paid employments. All this and more is urged, without favor to wise men who tell women to choose husbands and be happy, and say no more about it. The book is altogether one of the most noticeable arguments upon the subject it treats.

Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight, Lieutenant-Colonel Second Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

THE charm of this book begins with the noble face which greets you from its first page, and which, once seen, haunts you continually, in all the bright and manly words and all the heroic deeds which find record here. You must needs turn to it often as you read, and marvel at the perfect expression it gives to the pure, cheerful, devoted life this brave young soldier led.

As to its external facts, it was the career of multitudes: the civil pursuit suspended, the military life embraced with as great ardor as if it had been a long-cherished purpose; the seasoning of the good fibre in camps; the hope, the patience, the impatience; the greatly desired battle, and coveted occasion, not merely to endure, but to do, it is so common a career, that it seems the story of the whole nation; only the nation lived triumphing, and the individual lives that reflected her heroism were dark to her success. But the career which in the letters here given is suffered, for the most part, to portray itself, was that of a man whose excellent soldiership was wrought of material noticeably fine, even in a country and a time that offered so much of the best to war. The clear-headedness and knowledge of the world which would have made a successful lawyer, and the grace and culture which might have won a reputation in literature, appear in the unconscious and careless letters dashed off amid the duties and distractions of camps; while the rare unselfishness, the tenderness and active goodness which marked the character of this soldier, are eloquent in the testimonies of the friends and companions in arms. I have lived a soldier, I die a soldier, I wish to be buried as a soldier," he said to those who listened to his last requests, after his mortal wound at Antietam. Was our cause indeed so grand, and was the national purpose so exalted, that such a man- so fine, so clear, so kind could think, in death, of nothing better than its championship? Seeing the pitiful state into which we are so soon fallen, it seems scarcely possible; reading this book, we cannot doubt it.

We wish to say how simply and restrainedly this story of Wilder Dwight is told by one to whom the reader had been most willing to pardon excess of pride or fondness. It is his mother who has

shaped the memoir, and with a brief preliminary sketch of his boyhood and college-life and travels abroad, has skilfully connected the letters which contain the narrative of his life from the time when he entered the army, at the beginning of the war, until the time when he was struck down at its darkest hour. Then properly follow expressions of public and private grief and condolence; and so the whole has been quietly and unaffectedly said of facts and traits which make the reader exult to be of the same race and country with men like Wilder Dwight.

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IT is easy to see the great industry that goes to the completion of such a work as this, and all who, from taste or necessity, have to do with bibliography, must feel their indebtedness to Mr. Morgan. It has evidently been a labor of love and of patriotism with him; and while it has made him acquainted with more worthless books, probably, than were known even to the not wisely but too well read friend of Charles Lamb, it is a real service rendered to literature. The contributions to the material of local and provincial history, from both French and English sources, form a very large portion of the works and authors cited; and herein the manual of Canadian literature is of very obvious use. As to the multitude of sermons, pamphlets, poems, and novels, likewise carefully remembered, their record here can at least serve as a monument of untiring perseverance in our colonial neighbors, and as proof of that desire for something original and authentic in literature which goes before — often a long while before - a national literature. Looking over the titles of the poems and romances, and glancing at the criticisms on them, an American beholds the image of his own Republic of Letters as it was thirty or forty years ago. A celebration, at any cost, of Canadian scenes and incidents is praised as the promise of a Canadian literature; and those people over the St. Lawrence and the great lakes appear still guileless enough to believe that a national literature is to be coaxed into existence and nursed into prosperity.

Mr. Morgan's method in his work is much the same as Mr. Allibone's in his fa

mous Dictionary of Authors. Each writer's name is given, with a brief biographical statement, where the leading facts of his life are known, and then the titles of his works are cited, with criticism from the best authorities, and generally without comment where quotable criticism is wanting. The French authors stand in about the proportion of one to eight of the English, and they treat commonly of historical and scientific topics, while their Anglo-Saxon fellow colonists are the novelists, poets, and preachers. Of literary clergymen, there is indeed an extraordinary number mentioned, and the names of many writing officers of the British service go to swell the lists of Canadian authorship. From the prevailing obscurity and oblivion, such a name as John Foster Kirke's shines out with remarkable effect; there are others, like Haliburton's, which are also familiar, though scarcely of the unfading kind.

Early Recollections of Newport, R. I., from the Year 1793 to 1811. By GEORGE G. CHANNING, Newport, R. I. pp. 284

"NEWPORT," said a summer resident, "is the only place in the United States where you are out of America." The English crown still decorates the top of its tallest steeple.There is a town-crier. It gives one no sense of surprise to hear that the stern-post of Captain Cook's ship, the old "Endeavor," is built into one of the wharves. Where else should it be? It marks the spot where many other endeav ors have gone down.

There are single sidewalks in Newport, which are narrow enough and quaint enough, one would think, to lead an explorer back to the Middle Ages; and Mr. Channing's book is like these sidewalks. Yet his memory does not reach back to the brilliant period of Newport, but to its incipient decay; it was beginning to be old when he was young.

It was said in Puritan days, in Massachusetts, that, if any man lost his religion, he could find it again at some village in Rhode Island. And if there could be anything in those days more varied and peculiar than the two hundred and ten "pestilent heresies" already counted up, it must all have been put away in Rhode Island also, to be kept until Mr. Channing was born. Can it be really true that he remembers smoke-jacks and pewter plates,

that he saw men pilloried, and branded, and whipped through the streets at the cart's tail? Did people really ring the old year out and the new year in? Did watchmen cry the wind and weather at night; and were they cheered by occasional hospitalities on stormy nights, in the form of ginger and cider flip?

Besides these doubtful felicities of night wanderers, the author recalls other culinary delights, as, for instance "whitepot." It was pronounced as if written "whitpot," and was made of white Indian-meal and new milk, with enough molasses to give it a yellow tinge. He describes social festivities too; subscription assemblies, where the partners for the first two dances were assigned by lot; tea-drinkings where nobody spoke, and all the guests sat round the walls in high-backed chairs. Nobody spoke; it was not thought genteel." "Now and then a whisper might be heard, but as a general rule any deviation from the strictest formality was discouraged." What heights of saintly virtue must men and women have ascended in those days, through penitential exercises like these!

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In those days boys wore deep-ruffled shirts, the ruffles falling half-way down the back. Boots were a great luxury, and were required to come as high as the knee, and be surmounted by yellow tops. "Twice a year a noted cheap shoemaker from Bristol visited Newport to obtain the length of the feet of every boy and girl." Young men wore small-clothes and knee-buckles; young women usually wore sheepskin gloves dyed blue. "O the simplicity of that age, when a thin gold ear-hoop and a few strings of gold beads constituted the beginning and end of female finery!"

Mr. Channing, with a zeal becoming his profession, records with especial delight the ecclesiastical oddities of those days. It was not the custom, it seems, for the leading male parishioners to enter the house of worship at the beginning, but to wait till the first prayer was over; thus allowing to the pastor and the female saints one spiritual season unchecked by grosser presences. Church services thus reversed the customs of the old-fashioned English dinner-table, where the ladies and the clergy retired first.

He well remembers Dr. Hopkins, who indeed could hardly have failed to impress himself on boyish memories. For he wore, when on horseback, "a robe of stuff called, at the time, calamanco, - a glossy woollen material of green color,—which was

secured round the waist by a silken girdle. His head-gear was a red cap over a wig. He rode with his arms akimbo." The Robin-Hood ballads must have seemed very real to the Newport boys when they saw this austere Friar Tuck in Lincoln green riding forth on sunny mornings; but Mr. Channing admits no Maid Marian into the tale, and evidently questions the historic truth of Mrs. Stowe's tender legends.

It is pleasant to find that the author, true to the instincts of his name, was indignant even in childhood at "the stratagem employed by the vestry [of Trinity Church] to conceal the presence of colored people during service, which was effected by placing a frame with pear-shaped apertures at the side of the organ, through which they could see the minister and congregation, without being seen."

Who can read without regret, in these pages, of those palmy days of the Moravian Church (now extinct) when they had lovefeasts of chocolate and buns, in which the world's people might share, on paying fourpence? Was it through such an excess of hospitality that this kindly church died out? Why did it perish, when many a sect survives to feed its devotees on husks? But the Moravian church edifice still exists in Newport, transformed into a school-house, where eager boys gaze aloft at the now inaccessible pulpit, and ponder passionate dreams of breaking into the building during some vacation, and scaling its dizzy height. The name of the structure is now modified by the popular tongue into "Arabian Meetin'-house," as if to match the Jewish synagogue in a neighboring street, and as if the descendants of Roger Williams were resolved to include with a fine hospitality all the monotheisms of the world.

Touching schools, Mr. Channing amazes the reader with the statement, that children were in his day furnished by their parents with movable seats made of round blocks of wood of various sizes. With what an altogether jubilant roar and rumble must those sessions have been dismissed! Every recess-time must have been a ten-strike, for what boy could resist the temptation to set his seat spinning? The author furthermore records that such was his aversion to the portrait on the outside of Webster's Spelling-Book, that he once returned a new copy in indignation at seeing the same grim face, and afterwards invested the amount in sugar-candy. Then the cruel bookseller sarcastically denounced him be

fore the school as having so keen an appetite for knowledge as to have eaten his spelling-book. It must have been a serious matter, that portrait; for it is said that William Cobbett bequeathed to Noah Webster the sum of fifteen dollars "to enable him to procure a new engraved likeness of himself for the book, that children may no longer be frightened from their studies." It is an odd coincidence, that time and the editors have not only effaced Mr. Webster's original features from the outside of his Spelling-Book, but also from the inside of his Dictionary.

We must not, however, linger too long in the seductive paths of this literary Pompeii. The book is full of quaint reminiscences, simply and honestly told. It is egotistic, as it should be, but there is no personal conceit in it; and the chief exploit of his own which he narrates the saving of a wrecked vessel was really quite an heroic thing, if local traditions be trusted, and is here very modestly told. These pages display a few of the weaknesses of old age, perhaps, there are some trivialities and some discursiveness, and we are sometimes taken rather suddenly from liberty-trees to calico frocks, but they have also the most attractive traits of old age, - amiability and tolerance. To acquire years without prejudices is always beautiful; may the town which Mr. Channing celebrates grow old as gracefully!

The American Beaver and his Works. By LEWIS H. MORGAN, Author of "The League of the Iroquois." Philadelphia : Lippincott & Co. 1868.

WHAT Huber did for bees Mr. Morgan has done in some measure for beavers. The subject of his book is peculiarly an American one; for though beavers are found in the other hemisphere, they make no dams there, and a beaver without his dam is nobody.

Mr. Morgan has spent a good part of many successive summers in investigating the habits of the American branch of the family, studying them in their works, and making their personal acquaintance, so far as their natural reserve and shyness would admit. He has studied them on Lake Superior, and at the head of the Missouri, and supplemented the knowledge thus acquired by a vast amount of information gained through the Indians and the trappers. If he oversets some of the romances

put in circulation by Buffon and others, he nevertheless does not detract from the high reputation for forecast and intelligence which the subject of his investigations has always enjoyed. In fact, most readers will derive from his book no little respect and esteem for these quadruped engineers, mingled with a pang of regret at the widespread devastation made among them in obedience to the exactions of civilization.

Beaver families consist usually of seven or eight members, namely, the father, the mother, and the children of one and two years. The young beavers, after being weaned, are fed carefully with tender shoots of willows, birches, and poplars, till they are able to provide for themselves. After the second year they are expected to leave the parental lodge, find mates, and make lodges for themselves. It sometimes happens that they fail in effecting the desired alliance. They are then, according to the Indians, permitted to remain another year under the parental roof, where, however, they are in a sort of disgrace, and are compelled to work at the dams, and do other hard labor, as a punishment for their matrimonial failure. Mr. Morgan does not vouch for the latter part of this story.

He writes throughout in an humane and kindly spirit, and an evident sympathy, not only with beavers, but with all the rest of the animal kingdom. He has brought to this work, an episode in the midst of graver studies, the same well-trained powers of observation and reflection, and the same spirit of careful and persistent research, which have already distinguished him in larger fields of inquiry. The value of his book is much increased by a profusion of excellent illustrations, made in most cases from photographs.

Mr. Morgan argues, at the close of his book, that the beaver and other animals are guided, not by the blind power called instinct, but by a conscious intelligence, like that of man, though incomparably inferior in degree. We are disposed to agree with him; and yet we would call attention to one fact which invalidates his principal train of reasoning, founded on structural affinities between man and the reasoning animals. In those of the animal kingdom, in whom, above all others, intelligence is proverbial, there is no such structural affinity. Ants and bees have neither brain, spine, nor nerves; that is to say, they are without the organs in which a conscious intelligence is universally supposed to reside.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.

VOL. XXI.MAY, 1868. NO. CXXVII.

THE TURF AND THE TROTTING HORSE IN AMERICA.

NEARLY all the great trotting

horses of America have come of one blood, that of Messenger, an English horse, imported into New York in 1788.

The lineage of this horse can be traced directly back to the Darley Arabian, who was the sire of Flying Childers; and to the Cade mare, who was a granddaughter of the Godolphin Arabian. He was, therefore, of the best English thorough-bred racing stock.

All accounts concur in representing Messenger as a horse of superb form and extraordinary power and spirit. A groom who saw him taken off the ship which brought him to this country was accustomed to relate that, "the three other horses that accompanied him on a long voyage had become so reduced and weak that they had to be helped and supported down the gang-plank; but when it came Messenger's turn to land, he, with a loud neigh, charged down, with a negro on each side holding him back, and dashed off up the street on a stiff trot, carrying the negroes along, in spite of all their efforts to bring him to a stand-still."

He was a handsome gray, fifteen and three quarter hands high,* with "a large bony head, rather short, straight neck, with windpipe and nostrils nearly twice as large as ordinary; low withers, shoulders somewhat upright, but deep and strong; powerful loin and quarters; hocks and knees unusually large, and below them limbs of medium size, but flat and clean, and, whether at rest or in motion, always in a perfect position.

These records indicate that he had more of the form of the trotter than the thorough-bred horse in general. This form, along with the extraordinary vitality and endurance of his race, he gave to his progeny; which being persistently used and trained to trot became still more marked in these characteristic particulars. The first generation of his descendants were fine road horses, many of them fast, and all endowed with extraordinary courage and endurance. The second and third generations possessed in still greater perfection the form and action of the trotting horse, of which the fourth gen

A hand is four inches.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

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