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16.- The New Path. Published by the Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art. Nos. 1 to 8. May to December. 1863. [New York.] 8vo. Monthly. pp. 16.

By far the most interesting and noteworthy American publication concerning Art, during the past year, is the little journal called by the somewhat vague and inappropriate name of "The New Path." Unheralded by advertisements, appearing without name of publisher, editor, or contributor, it makes no immodest claim to the attention of the public. It rests its claim, whatever it may be, upon its intrinsic merits. And in truth there has been no discourse or criticism upon matters of Art in America so valuable as its pages contain, since the essays by Mr. Stillman in the earlier volumes of "The Crayon." For among the writers in "The New Path" are men, not only of talents, but of serious convictions and of independent thought. Disciples of Mr. Ruskin, they are no blind followers even of that great master, to whom every true lover of art must confess his inestimable obligations. They are beholden, indeed, to him, not only for quickened perceptions of natural beauty, but for understanding that truth to nature is the test of all art, the most imaginative no less than the most literal. The opinions of the writers of "The New Path," even when far from popular, are expressed with manly frankness and honesty. There is occasionally in its papers a tone of dogmatism and self-sufficiency, occasionally also a crudity and want of completeness, which, being combined with singular sincerity and simplicity, not unpleasantly reveal the youth while indicating the capacity for growth of the writers. But "The New Path" has also contained essays which exhibit rare clearness and consecutiveness of thought, expressed in a style of not less uncommon transparency and unobtrusive beauty.

The fact that there is in this country so much empty, unmeaning, and ignorant talk about Art, is likely to prevent "The New Path" from receiving from the wearied public the attention it deserves. But a journal holding faithfully in view the object of promoting truth (that is, truthfulness) in Art, ought to fulfil an important part in correcting the prevailing false opinions, and in cultivating the undeveloped and too often misdirected taste of the community. "The New Path" may not gain a wide and general success, but it gives happy promise for the future of Art in America, by giving proof of the increase and ability of the school of thinkers and artists to which the truth-seeking reformers who contribute to its pages belong. It is a small school as yet, but it includes the most genuine artistic aspirations and most ardent feeling of the times. Its influence is already deeply felt, and if its leaders hold firm to their own

principles, they will finally be recognized as the redeemers of American Art from its present servitude to tradition and falsehood, and its subserviency to the popular preference for what is showy and admired to what is intrinsically worthy of admiration.

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Dream Children. By the Author of "Seven Little People and their Friends." Cambridge: Sever and Francis. 1864. 16mo. pp. 241.

AMONG the multitude of books for children published for the Christmas holidays, and for New Year's gifts, there will hardly be found any more charming than this little volume of stories. Its external form, the prettiness of its covers, the clearness of its finely-cut type, the appropriate originality of its initial letters, the excellence of its larger illustrations (better, however, in engraving than in design), are only the befitting dress and adornment of stories delightful alike in feeling and in fancy. Fancy is of all others the gift that the fairy godmother has most rarely given to the babies who were to become writers of stories for children. Hans Andersen's godmother gave him a large stock of it; and though there are said to be no fairies in the New World, Hawthorne got from somebody the precious gift in as full measure as if he had been born in the old country. Mr. Scudder will not think it a disparagement if we say that his stories sometimes remind his readers both of Andersen and Hawthorne, but that the best among them are those which are most original. If he will trust to his own fancy, seek the nourishment for it a little more at home, and if he will avoid a tendency to sentimentality which better suits German than American taste, he may take rank with the masters in the art of storytelling for children, and thus gain the happiest of literary reputations.

This book is not unworthily called "The Golden Treasury Juvenile," as forming one of that Golden Treasury Series the excellence and beauty of which are so well and widely known. No prettier books than these have been printed in America; and it will be a pleasure to the old as well as to the young, if, year after year, Mr. Scudder should add to the lengthening series a volume of stories as good as these "Dream Children."

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCIII.

APRIL, 1864.

ART. I.- Life and Correspondence of THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston. By JOHN WEISS. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. xiv., 478; viii., 530.

MR. PARKER'S biographer enjoys the singular advantage of writing about his distinguished friend while the traits of his character and the incidents of his personal life are still vivid in the minds of his contemporaries, and while at the same time, owing to the swift passage of events, he is thrust back into the shadows of a past generation, as belonging to which he may be treated with all the unreserve which remoteness of time alone allows. Not four years have passed since Mr. Parker was laid in his Florentine grave: it seems fifty since he walked Boston streets. The boys and girls who knew him are scarcely young men and women, yet they belong to another epoch and to a new country. A complete edition of his writings has not been published; yet his greatest thoughts are already nearly, if not quite, absorbed by multitudes in great states, and are taking organic shape in political and social movements. His words of warning and prophecy are still ringing in our ears; but the warning has long ceased to be neces sary, and the prophecy is far on its way towards historical fulfilment. Our hand is yet warm with the grasp he gave it, and yet it has for some time clasped eagerly the hands of men who were his foes. Our civil war has done the work of half a cen

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tury at least in the way of revolutionizing popular thought and sentiment. Many a one with whom he did battle with all his might would be fighting shoulder to shoulder with him were he alive to-day; and causes in whose behalf he did such manly and, it often seemed, such hopeless service, are now riding triumphantly into power, a long train of his bitterest enemies cheering them on.

Mr. Weiss has skilfully availed himself of both the advantages we have alluded to. He presents with careful minuteness every detail of Mr. Parker's personal life and character, and at the same time he throws them back into a perspective which softens their outline and sets them in the light of actual events. His cordial sympathy with his subject does not seem in the least obtrusive. Many will read the book with intense interest, who would not have looked at it three years ago; and many who, reading it three years ago, would have complained of the biographer's eager partisanship, will now wonder at the moderation with which he has executed his task. In a few in stances he has indiscreetly printed personalities which could not have been avoided in a correspondence like Mr. Parker's, but which Mr. Parker never would have indulged in except in confidence with his intimate friends, and on special occasions which made them pertinent or necessary to his purpose They were not meant for the public ear, and not for another time. The editor, we think, has done wisely in point of literary taste, kindly as regards the persons spoken of, and honorably towards Theodore Parker, in cancelling one or two passages, occupying in all some twenty lines, in the American edition. A delicate fastidiousness would perhaps have cancelled more, where the remarks are unimportant as throwing light on Mr. Parker's opinions or character, or where the compulsory substitute of a capital letter and a blank for a proper name deprives the criticism of all value by depriving it of all point. We read letters, especially such letters as Theodore Parker's, in order to get at the genuine opinions of the man who writes them; and passages in letters may about as well be withheld, as published with a reserve that leaves us in the dark in regard to those opinions.

But this is a trifling criticism, by the way. With all defects

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of omission and commission, we have material enough for a full-length picture of Mr. Parker, drawn with the fidelity of a Millais. We have the man as he was, unveiled and unadorned. And a most remarkable man it is. A man remarkable, not as an exception to humanity, but as an expression of humanity; not for qualities which distinguished him from his fellows, but for qualities which identified him with his fellows; not as having gifts which others had not, but for having, in wonderful measure, gifts which all have. He was a man of his age; a man who summed up the tendencies and the genius of his generation, an American in every bone and muscle and nerve and drop of blood in his body. He was rooted deep in American soil, and drew sustenance from every element. His absorbing power was marvellous. How he drank up each drop of vital blood in his family connections! quality in his fine ancestry remained unappropriated. tap-root reached down a hundred years and more, and drew in fearlessness and great endurance and the love of placidam quietem sub ense from grandfather and great-grandfather. Semper aude was the motto of five generations of his progeni tors, and the daring of all the five generations passed into him. From his father he imbibed the liking for metaphysics, psychology, mental and moral philosophy, geometry, and the mathematics, his passion for reading, his joviality and fun, his hatred of Paley and Jonathan Edwards, his independence of religious thought, his magnanimity, his care for the widow and the orphan, his Unitarianism, his suspicion of miracle, and even his administrative ability. He drew from his mother tenderness of conscience, moral earnestness, religious sentiment, charity, industry, and thrift. One of his rootlets searched out a kinsman who was famous for his knowledge of the Oriental tongues. The only one of the family whose disposition he altogether failed to assimilate seems to have been the solitary member who "joined the church." All the rest of the Parkers reappeared in him. Planted on Lexington Common, he absorbed the heroism of its bloody ground, and with it the whole genius of the Revolution as conceived by its most ardent and sanguine spirits. As he grew older, his roots extended farther, and laid wider fields under contribution. Trans

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