_How Could He Help It? or, The Heart Triumphant_. By A.S. ROE. New York: Derby & Jackson.
A fair representative of a class of books that are always pleasant reading, although written without taste, cultivation, or originality,--because they are obviously dictated by a kind heart and genuine earnestness. In this volume the numerous heroes (so similar in every respect that one might fancy them to be only one hero mysteriously multiplied, like Kehama) and the fair heroines (exactly equalling the heroes in number, we are happy to assure the tenderhearted reader) are not in the least interesting, except for sheer goodness of heart. This unaided moral excellence, however, fairly redeems the book, and so far softens even our critical asperity that we venture only to suggest,--first, that the utterly unprecedented _patois_ of Mrs. Kelly is not Irish, for which a careful examination of the context leads us to think it was intended,--secondly, that "if he had have done it" is equally guiltless of being English,--thirdly, that, if our author, desiring to describe the feelings of a lover holding his mistress's hand, was inspired by Tennyson's phrase of "dear wonder," he failed, in our opinion, to improve on his original, when he substituted "the fleshy treasure in his grasp."
We do not propose to submit the English of this new literary effort of the House of Representatives at Washington to a critical examination, (though it strikingly reminds us of some of the poems of Mr. Whitman, and is a very fair piece of descriptive verse in the _b'hoy_-anergic style,) or to attempt any argument on the vexed question of Protection. But there is a section of the proposed act which has a direct interest not only for all scholars, but for that large and constantly increasing class whose thirst for what may be called voluminous knowledge prompts them to buy all those shelf-ornamenting works without which no gentleman's library can be considered complete. Though in the matter of book-buying the characters of gentleman and scholar, so seldom united, are distinguished from each other with remarkable precision,--the desire of the former being to cover the walls of what he superstitiously calls his "study," and that of the latter to line his head, while the resultant wisdom is measured respectively by volume and by mass,--yet it is equally important to both that the literary furniture of the one and the intellectual tools of the other should be cheap.