Editors' Table. 'REVIEWERS REVIEWED:' -BY THE AUTHOR OF 'PELAYO.' 559 This is a little volume of seventy-two pages- dedication, introduction, argument, text, notes, and appendix, 'Where is Cupid's crimson motion? Bear us safe, meandering ocean, Where the stagnant torrents flow!' MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES. Messrs. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY have published a handsome volume, of some five hundred pages, entitled 'A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands; with Remarks upon the Natural History of the Islands, Origin, Languages, Traditions, and Usages of the Inhabitants. By JOHN WILLIAMS, of the London Missionary Society.' We regret that we are compelled to advert so briefly to this excellent work, in gathering the materials for which, the author travelled one hundred thousand miles, and expended upward of eighteen years. The book is full upon all the heads mentioned in its title, and is illustrated by numerous engravings on wood. The style is simple and flowing, and the details invariably interesting, not less to the general than the Christian reader. We were struck with a fact recorded toward the close of the volume, illustrative of that divine purpose in nature of which a correspondent elsewhere speaks, in the present number. In many of the coral islands of the South Sea, there are neither streams nor springs; and were it not for the cocoa-nut, the inhabitants would perish. On a sultry day, when the very ground burns with heat, the natives climb this fruit-tree, and in each unripe nut find a pint or more of a grateful lemonade-like water, as refreshing as if taken from a spring. 'SCIENCE MADE EASY:'-'Being a Familiar Introduction to the Principles of Chemistry, Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics.' — We took up this corpulent dictionaryquarto, under the impression that it was one of those scanty and superficial 'made-easy' books, good-naturedly intended to instil dull truths into unwary understandings, by alternate layers of utile and dulce, but capable in reality of very little good. Its perusal has agreeably disappointed us. The author has not alone skirmished on the frontier of a few of the sciences, but he has drawn a small array of them into close order, in such wise that they may be surveyed with ease and expedition, and made to fructify without a world of unnecessary trouble. The volume is illustrated by numerous wood-cuts. MISS LESLIE'S 'PENCIL SKETCHES.'- This volume contains all of Miss LESLIE'S fugitive pieces which have appeared since the publication of her second series of 'Pencil Sketches.' Every article has been carefully revised by the author, and improved, as she believes, by numerous alterations and additions. The following are the contents: 'The Red Box, or Scenes at the General Wayne;' 'Constance Allerton, or the Mourning Suits;' 'The Officers, a Story of the Last War;' 'The Serenades, and Dream of Songs' 'The Old Farm-House;' 'That Gentleman, or Pencillings on Ship-board;' 'Charles Loring, a Tale of the Revolution;' and 'Alphonsine.' Aside from the natural ease and conversational ability, peculiar to all Miss LESLIE's productions, the reader may always rely upon a main object of intellectual or moral good. "THE HAWK CHIEF.' -This 'Tale of the Indian Country,' by JOHN T. IRVING, JR., author of 'Indian Sketches,' is too clever a production to be despatched in a few lines; but we are compelled to postpone a more enlarged notice of the work, until some future occasion. In the matter of literary provender, it seems latterly to be either a feast or a famine.' Our hands are now full, which but recently were quite empty, of intellectual We shall discuss them in order, when space and leisure serve. wares. ELEVENTH VOLUME OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.- We cannot permit the closing number of the present volume of this Magazine to go forth to our readers, without holding a brief and familiar tête-à-tête with them, in relation to its prospects, literary and otherwise. For the past, let it speak for itself. We have accomplished all we could, and our friends are kind enough to admit that it has been beyond what was promised, and more than satisfactory. For the future, we have rich stores of valuable and entertaining matter, not only from our present unequalled corps of contributors, but from several writers, akin to the best of them, whose acquaintance our readers have not hitherto made. We can promise, that the more solid articles which the next volume will contain, will neither be too voluminous to be read, nor too dull to be useful; that they will be varied and novel in subject, and attractive in manner. Eschewing politics and polemics, our readers will escape the long winded discussions to which they so frequently give rise; and they may rely, morcover, upon a faithful discharge of our critical responsibilities, uninfluenced by partizan or sectarian feeling. With articles of a lighter description, we shall, as heretofore, be well supplied. By light articles,' we do not mean silly love-stories, aud inflated, finical rhapsodies, nor the aimless efforts of writers mounted on airy stilts of abstraction, but matter capable of improving while it amuses; that shall fortify like a cordial,' and be productive of sweet blood and generous spirits ; reviving and animating the dead calm of idle life, entertaining the leisure of the active, and relieving the toil of the laborious; now beguiling, perchance, pain of body, or diverting anxiety of mind; and happily again, it may be, filling the place of bad thoughts, or suggesting better. We do not anticipate that every paper will please every reader. Our articles are so many dishes, our readers guests; that which one admires, perhaps another rejects; but we shall take especial care, that none may be without something to enlighten his understanding, and gratify his fancy or taste. The pericraniums are not disfurnished, good reader, from which so many good things have heretofore been evoked for your edification and profit; nor will they be, by some score or two, the only sources of your future intellectual gratification. You will believe us, when we hold out to you these tokens of good, since we have never deceived you. Judge ye, if we have not 'fought our way to your good graces valiantly, and showed our passport at every barrier.' Our success is abundantly satisfactory, so far as reputation and an increasing subscription-list are concerned. The pressure,' however, which has borne so heavily upon all business, and all professions, has not been without its influence upon the pecuniary interests of this Magazine. Many of our unthinking readers — we will harbor no worse opinion of them-unwilling to curtail their expenses, by stopping their subscriptions, have been quite ready to lessen them by not paying for a work which they could not bring themselves to forego. To such we have only to say, they cannot be fully aware of the injustice of which they are guilty, nor of the unmitigated exertions which they so illy requite. The 'never-ending, still beginning' labor which is going on for their benefit and amusement, long after their heads are upon their pillows, or while they are indulging in the relaxations from toil which are denied to the less fortunate laborer in the literary vineyard, should be promptly rewarded; and we cannot but hope that each delinquent under whose eye this paragraph may fall, will yield tardy justice to those who have wrought long and faithfully for him. Having said thus much, explanatory, denunciatory, and expostulatory, we enter upon a new volume with an enhanced patronage, enlarged hopes, and a settled determination to lose uo opportunity, and to spare no labor nor expense, which may increase the reputation of this Magazine, and widen the already far-reaching boundary of its circulation and influence. ERRATA. In the poem 'Floral Astrology,' page 498, the word us should follow the final under,' ja the third line of the third stanza. In the 'Lay of the Madman,' p. 518, the seventh line from the close should read, 'They tremble and dart through my every vein.' |