and Questions adapted to each Paragraph. For the Use of Schools. By Amelia B. Edwards. American Edition, Revised and Corrected. Boston: Hickling, Swan, & Brewer. 1857. 12mo. pp. 106.

The Student's Gibbon. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon. Abridged, incorporating the Researches of recent Commentators. By William Smith, LL. D. Illustrated by one hundred Engravings on Wood. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1857. 12mo. pp.

677.

Public Amusement for Poor and Rich. A Discourse delivered before the Church of the Unity, Worcester, December 16, 1855, and repeated, by Request, before the Worcester Lyceum, January 15, 1857, at the Warren Street Chapel, Boston, April 29, 1857, and before the Young Men's Christian Union, May 21, 1857. By Edward E. Hale. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1857.

Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia. By William C. Prime. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1857. 12mo. pp. 498.

Tent Life in the Holy Land. By William C. Prime. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1857. 12mo. pp. 498.

Christian Consolations. Sermons designed to furnish Comfort and Strength to the Afflicted. By A. P. Peabody, Pastor of the South Church, Portsmouth, N. H. Third Edition. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1857. 12mo. pp. 438.

Payson, Dunton, and Scribner's Combined System of Rapid Penmanship. Nos. 1-10. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co.

The Homœopathic Principle Applied to Insanity. A Proposal to treat Lunacy by Spiritualism. By James John Garth Wilkinson. Boston: Otis Clapp. 1857.

Homeopathy and Homœopathic Practitioners in Europe. By E. Sanford, M. D., Providence, R. I. Boston: Otis Clapp. 1857.

Homœopathy: Its Testimony against itself. Boston. 1857.

Lithograph of Edgar A. Poe. Boston: Masury, Silsbee, & Case. 1857.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CLXXVII.

OCTOBER, 1857.

ART. I.-1. The Life of Charlotte Bronté. By E. C. GASKELL, Author of "Mary Barton," "Ruth," etc. In two volumes. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1857. 12mo. pp. 285, 269.

2. The Bronté Novels. -Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by CURRER BELL (CHARLOTTE BRONTE).- Shirley. A Tale. By the Author of "Jane Eyre." - Villette. By the Author of "Jane Eyre" and "Shirley."- Wuthering Heights. By ELLIS BELL (EMILY BRONTÉ).- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. By ACTON BELL (ANNE Bronte). New York: Harper and Brothers. 1857.

3. Agnes Grey. By ACTON BELL (ANNE BRONTE). 4. The Professor. A Tale. By CURRER BELL. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1857. 12mo. pp. 330.

THE first thrill of regret which passes over the community on the death of a favorite author, in the prime of his power, is tinged with a very decided selfishness. We count the years which we thought would bring us new volumes from the same pen, and feel ourselves defrauded of a promised treasure. Our expectations have been raised by what has been achieved, and our appreciative welcome prepared for what the future might bring. This feeling is independent of any personal interest in the dead, and when that has already existed, or is subsequently awakened by circumstances, is soon merged in VOL. LXXXV. — NO. 177.

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a less selfish sorrow for the broken life. The genius which wrought for our delight assumes the proportions of a friend, over whom we claim the right to mourn, and upon whose memory we dwell with loving interest. Thus we take up our pen for the task we have now set ourselves, not as a cold and distant criticism would suggest, but with reverent friendliness and warmth of interest, which we believe fully warranted by the circumstances of the case. The author of "Jane Eyre" is no longer a mere abstraction to the reader's mind, but instinct with vitality and clear in individuality. We know her henceforth even better as a woman than as a writer. When we reflect that the impression made by Currer Bell was produced by only three works, we feel all the more deeply that the powers so carefully and conscientiously used could never, had she lived, have been desecrated by any hasty or incomplete publication, that no outside pressure would have induced hurried utterance, that the reticence which marked the past would have characterized the future, and that the high ideal before her mind would never have been lowered at the instigation of popularity or by the temptation of gain. The works already published would have been followed by others worth? of their predecessors, and if they came more slowly than ou eagerness desired them, their merit would have constrained us to acknowledge that time was necessary to ripen in full maturity the fruit which boasted such rare flavor. Tos hope blasted, this future denied, we cling the more closely to the treasures we already possess, and turn eagerly towards every avenue for gaining knowledge of the nature which originated them, rejoicing when our cool judgment alle ws us to approve what our tenderness for the dead induces us to value.

The world does not need to be told that the works of an author are not always counterparts of is actual experience; we have long known that the merriet quips often come from the saddest hearts, and the most chrymose sentimentalities from the jolliest natures; yet we feel, nevertheless, that in the life of an author we are to search for the secret of his power, the clew to his imagining, the explanation of his literary position. When we criticise a work with no personal knowledge of the writer, we obtain an impartiality of judgment in

some respects, at the expense of thorough and sympathetic understanding of his point of view, his qualifying circumstances and his personal enthusiasms and prejudices. The blunders of inference which follow upon letting loose the astuteness of professed critics over an unknown country, are often ludicrous, sometimes disastrous. The knowledge of an author's life, by increasing our power of throwing ourselves into his position, sheds light on many a dark passage, explains many a seeming paradox, and more than compensates for the loss of entire impartiality of judgment, with its accompanying indifference of criticism. Indeed, a perfectly impartial criticism is almost impossible, since the desire to criticise at any length implies that the heart is interested in favor of, or the feelings excited against, the work in question. In the absence of this motive power we can furnish only a tame and spiritless statement, little better than a table of contents. The critic who throws himself con amore into his subject is not necessarily warped out of his critical perpendicular, and a genial appreciation of the merits of his author or a quick perception of his defects need not degenerate into fulsome flattery or bitter invective.

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In the search for information concerning an author, we are fortunate when we come upon a biography like that which Mrs. Gaskell gives us of Miss Bronté. We find in it, not only the satisfaction of an urgent curiosity upon many points of personal history, but a key to Currer Bell's fictions, which sends us to their reperusal with a new and more tender int fest. And in the glimpses given of the sisters Emily and Anne, those strange mental organizations in which peculiarities were carried almost into deformities, we learn to account for the strange elements present in their works. We find the atmos-. phere of the novels predominating in the "Life,"❞— the "counterfeit presentment" of persons and incidents known personally or by tradition, placed before us in the romances. This is especially true in Charlotte's case; for her mind was less narrow by nature, and her life more varied in feeling and in action, than that of either of her sisters. The most repulsive and the most contradictory of her fictitious characters prove to be but the careful elaboration of outlines sketched