Everything suffers a sea-change in the depths of Mr. Hawthorne's mind,
gets rimmed with an impalpable fringe of melancholy moss, and there is
a tone of sadness in this book as in the rest, but it does not leave us
sad. In a series of remarkable and characteristic works, it is perhaps
the most remarkable and characteristic. If you had picked up and read a
stray leaf of it anywhere, you would have exclaimed, "Hawthorne!"
The book is steeped in Italian atmosphere. There are many landscapes in
it full of breadth and power, and criticisms of pictures and statues
always delicate, often profound. In the Preface, Mr. Hawthorne pays a
well-deserved tribute of admiration to several of our sculptors,
especially to Story and Akers. The hearty enthusiasm with which he
elsewhere speaks of the former artist's "Cleopatra" is no surprise to
Mr. Story's friends at home, though hardly less gratifying to them than
it must be to the sculptor himself.
_A Trip to Cuba_. By Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
1860. pp. 251.
For readers of the "Atlantic," this little volume will need no further
commendation than the mere statement that nearly a quarter of it is
made up of hitherto unpublished material.
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