The narrative covers a space of several years, but is so told that we are furnished with details rather than generalities; and particular scenes, events, and conversations are set forth vividly and minutely. The descriptions of natural scenery, and of works of Art, many of which come naturally into the story, show a cultivated and observant eye and a command of judicious language. The characters are well developed, and, with an unimportant exception, there is nothing introduced into the book that is not necessary to the completion of the story. "Vernon Grove" will commend itself to all readers who like works of fiction that are lively and healthy too; and will give its author a high rank among the lady-novelists of our day and country.
_Arabian Days' Entertainments_. Translated from the German, by HERBERT PELHAM CORTIS. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1858.
In this famous nineteenth century of ours, which prides itself on being practical, and feeds voraciously on facts, and considers itself almost above being amused, we for our part rejoice to greet such a book as this. Our great-great-grandfathers, when they were boys, were happy in having wise and good grandfathers who told them pleasant stories of what never happened,--and who loved well to tell them, because they were truly wise men, and knew what the child's mind relished and fattened upon,--nay, and because, like all truly good men, they themselves indulged a fond, secret, half-belief that these child's stories of theirs were, if the truth could be got at, more than half true. We should be sorry to believe that this good old life of story-telling and story-hearing had utterly gone out. It belonged to an age that only very foolish men and very vulgar men laugh at without blushing.
"We of the nineteenth century" have a certain way of our own, however, of enjoying that most rarely fascinating class of literary productions known as _stories_,--a critical, perhaps over-intellectual, way,--but still sufficing, it is comfortable to know, to keep the story at very near its ancient dignity in the realm of letters. Perhaps it is a true sign of the perfect story, that it ministers at once to these two unsympathizing mental appetites, and pleases completely, not only the man, but his--by this aide--ever-so-great-grandfather, the child.