MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 391 



Lays for Light Hearts ; Songs, &c. By J. E. CARPENTER, Author 

 of "Random Rhymes," &cJ Willoughby, Goswell Street. 



THIS book will greatly add to Mr. Carpenter's reputation as an Author. It 

 has seldom fallen to our duty to peruse a more agreeable little volume ; for, 

 though put forth without pretensions, it exhibits an agreeable miscellany of 

 wit and satire. The author has not only made himself conversant with the 

 passions of his own sex, but has probed the hearts of the fairer portion of the 

 other, whose vanities and petty foibles he forcibly, though good humouredly, 

 exposes. 



We have to contrast with these some minor poems of a serious cast, and 

 a variety of ballads which, he mentions, were written as mere vehicles for 

 music, but which he underrates ; for among them are several touching and 

 elegant compositions. 



We regret that our limits preclude us from extracting a comic article how- 

 ever, we select the following, which, though of a grave tendency, is not the 

 less calculated to amuse. 



DEATH. 



THOU comest when the flowers 



Of Spring are on the ground, 

 'Mid Winter's ice-crowned towers 



There also art thou found ; 

 A phantom amid pleasure, 



Earth's fairest buds to blight, 

 To wrap Hope's infant treasure 



In everlasting night. 



Thou dwellest by the fountain, 



Thou lurkest in the air, 

 The valley and the mountain, 



DEATH ! thou art everywhere ! 

 All own alike thy power, 



The fruit, the flower, the tree, 

 Each wither in an hour 



Subservient to thee. 



Yet many in thy keeping, 



Whom sorrow hath oppress'd, 

 Are now all calmly sleeping 



Upon thy bridegroom breast : 

 Then, " Death, where is thy sting ? " 



Thy vict'ry, Grave, how won ? 

 Thou slayest all, grim King ; 



Oh, Death ! thou sparest none. 



We are bound, however, as candid critics, to confess that the two con- 

 cluding lines of the last verse perfectly contradict the idea intimated, rather 

 than expressed, in the six preceding ones. We conceive what the author 

 intended to say but he has failed totally in making his idea clearly un- 

 derstood by the general reader. Let him look to this in future 'tis the 

 carelessness of youthful authorship. 



The Linwoods, or Sixty Years since in America. By Miss SEDG- 

 WICK. Churton, Holies Street. 



ALTHOUGH the authoress of " Hopeleslie," " Redwood," and " The Lin- 

 woods," does not, as a novelist, possess the untiring activity of Cooper, the 



