440 



LITERATURE AND LITERARY PROGRESS IN 1870. 



romancer, and thence came two biographies, 

 one by Charles Perkins, quite as good perhaps 

 as could have been looked for in the short 

 time that must have been at command be- 

 tween the announcement of Mr. Dickens's 

 death and that of his "Life," but bearing un- 

 mistakable marks of haste. The book was 

 gotten up with a comely external finish. The 

 other Was by R. Shelton Mackenzie, and with 

 the advantage of a little more time for its pre- 

 paration had a more decided advantage in the 

 facility of so practised a litterateur as Dr. 

 Mackenzie. This book is enriched with a large 

 amount of anecdote and incident respecting 

 Mr. Dickens and his literary contemporaries. 

 Both works supplied merely a temporary re- 

 source. The " Life of Arthur Tappan " is a 

 biography of rare and durable interest. The 

 identification of the subject with the vital 

 issue which was finally tried by the wager of 

 battle in our great civil war made him, in spite 

 of himself, though all his life a private citizen, 

 assume the proportions of a public character. 

 But scarcely less interesting to contemplate are 

 his private character and life, and the training 

 of the Puritan home where his nature received 

 its determining direction. The man and his 

 manner of life are admirably depicted by his 

 surviving brother and sharer with him in the 

 long obloquy and late triumph of the anti- 

 slavery cause. In the "Life and Correspond- 

 ence of George Read, a Signer of the Declara- 

 tion of Independence," by his grandson, "Wil- 

 liam Thompson Read, a contribution is made 

 to our knowledge of the Revolution in- the 

 persons of actors not identified with either the 

 Northern or the Southern centre of the move- 

 ment Massachusetts or Virginia. A life, not 

 of startling incident, but crowded with various 

 usefulness and crowned with much deserved 

 honor, is commemorated it is not easy fitly 

 to describe it by "Memoirs of the Life and 

 Services of the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter, D. D., 

 LL. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 

 Church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania," by 

 M. A. De Wolfe Howe, D. D. The "Biograph- 

 ical Annals of Williams College," by the Rev. 

 Calvin Durfee, D. D., author of a History of the 

 same institution, presents in its pages what 

 may be called without invidiousness a truer 

 history, a history of the men whose names 

 have given it reputation, and the men whom 

 the college has given to the world. 



In this connection mention should be again 

 made of Lippincott's (Thomas's) Biographical 

 Dictionary. Its successive parts, as they have 

 appeared, have confirmed the good impression 

 made by its first issues, as of a work that for 

 careful editing, strict regard for accuracy, and 

 comprehensiveness of treatment, leaves not 

 much to be desired. To these notices we add 

 the titles following: 



Memories of a Consecrated Life ; or, A Memorial 

 Sketch of Kate McClellan. 



The Memories of Fifty Tears .... chiefly spent in 

 the Southwest. By W. H. Sparks. 



The Life of the Eev. Thomas Brainerd, D. D. 



The Genial Showman. Reminiscences of the Life 

 of Artemus Ward, and Pictures of a Showman's Ca- 

 reer in the Western World. By Edward B. Kings- 

 ton . 



Archbishop McIIale ; his Life and Times. A Lec- 

 ture. By Martin A. O'Brennan, LL. D. 



The Pastor and Preacher ; A Memorial of the late 

 Baron Stow, D. D. By Eollin H. Neale. 



Hugh Davey Evans, LL. D. A Memoir founded 

 upon Recollections written by Himself. By the Rev. 

 Hall Harrison, M. A. 



The Life and Times of David Zeisberger, the 

 Western Pioneer and Apostle of the Indians. By 

 Edmund De Schweinitz. 



Memoir of Washington Irving. With Selections 

 from his Works and Criticisms. By Charles Adams, 

 D.D. 



Thomas Chalmers ; A Biographical Study. By 

 James Dodds. 



Life and Letters of Louis Moreau Gottschalk. By 

 Octavia Hensel, his Friend and Pupil. 



Life of Bartholomew de Las Casas, of the Order of 

 St. Dominic, Protector-General of the Indians and 

 first Bishop of Chiapa and New Mexico. By one of 

 the Dominican Fathers of New York. 



Brigadier-General Thomas Francis Meagher. His 

 Political and Military Career. By Captain W. F. 

 Lyon. 



PHILOSOPHY. It might be rash to assert that 

 little is doing in the higher departments of phi- 

 losophic inquiry if, in the present ardor for 

 the science of things, it may be allowed us to 

 assume that there is any thing higher merely 

 because not much is publishing. It is certain 

 that those who are interested in metaphysical 

 and ethical speculation manifest that interest 

 in the face of a good deal of indifference or 

 aversion. But there are such persons, and, if 

 this article had to do with the probabilities of 

 the future rather than with accomplished facts, 

 it would not be difficult to show the evidence 

 of a steady activity in this direction. Even as 

 an accomplished fact, it is a significant circum- 

 stance that such a periodical as the Journal 

 of Speculative Philosophy continues its regu- 

 lar appearance, laden with expositions of the 

 German schools of thought. Another periodi- 

 cal, entitled The Modern Thinker, has been 

 started as the organ of adventurous and not 

 very reverent thinkers, hardly constituting a 

 school, with what degree of acceptance among 

 readers we lack information. But, of books of 

 this kind, the number that appeared during 

 the year was small, including, however, some 

 of more than transient interest and value. 



President McCosh, of the College of New- 

 Jersey, has come before the public with a work 

 on Formal Logic, entitled the "Laws of Dis- 

 cursive Thought." He criticises Sir William 

 Hamilton's doctrine of the syllogism, rejecting 

 the chief peculiarity he attempted to engraft 

 upon it. The work is marked by the author's 

 well-known ability, but has been criticised in 

 a way to indicate that the science of logic has 

 its boundaries and function yet to define. But 

 it is a pleasure to welcome so eminent a thinker 

 into the ranks of American authors. 



" Principles of a System of Philosophy," by 

 A. Bierbower, shows some acute thinking, but 

 is, on the whole, more ambitious than success- 



