ground; and so far as they are concerned, England sustains the fame of her fair aristocracy, and Scotland remains unrivalled for her "bonnie lasses." Fitness, indeed, is what ought to be considered in any kind of comparison between different countries; and in that respect, while we do not demand in the daughters of an industrious population any remarkable refinement of beauty, we do expect to find in the representative mothers of a republican nation a marked individuality of character-an expectation, however, not realized.

Dismissing the art portion of this volume, we have a word to say upon the authorship. The portraits being the principal feature, it was no doubt a difficult matter to find a suitable literary padding to pack between them; and a continuous fiction by a single writer being determined upon, Mrs. Kirkland has executed her task in a most praiseworthy manner; but, besides the literary extravagance of spreading such a light sketch over such "expansive pages," it would have been more appropriate to have had letter-press portraits by twelve American female authors, of the noble lives or noble deeds of some of their most memorable country women. Were there no heroines of the Revolution to whom such a monument was due? Or are there none illustrious enough among the living, to become, in this form, as in their actual life, the models of their sex?

"The Home Book of the Picturesque" is the result of such a combination of labor as we have just suggested, and on that, as well as on other accounts, it has our preference. It is truly representative of "American Scenery, Art, and Literature."

The landscapes, however, though American, are not peculiarly so; and they serve rather to show the similarity than the difference between the scenery of the old country and the new.

The literary material is excellent, and is

furnished by the leading masters in that department. Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Miss Cooper, Bayard Taylor, Willis, Tuckerman, Mary E. Field, and W. C. Bryant, are all contributors, and each on some favorite locality or topic.

The opening paper by Magoon, on "Scenery and Mind," is an elaborate, eloquent and classical production. The closing one by Dr. Bethune, on "Art in the United States, shows that its development there is the same as in other countries and times, owing to the gradual alliance of wealth and taste in the same individuals.

Among the gift-books of the season that are truly American in material and style, as well as in name, specific mention deserves to be made of "The Iris." This is by no means an ephemeral production, nor is it "got up in the usual manner of books of this class. It is an original work containing materials that were no doubt destined for independent publication, but which were pressed into the service of the Annuals. Captain Eastman, of the United States topographical corps, has furnished a series of drawings of some of the most striking and remarkable objects connected with Indian traditions, which he made during a nine years' residence among the Indian tribes; and Mrs. Eastman has furnished poems and tales founded on the legends which she gathered during her sojourn in the wilderness. The illustrations are in chromo-lithography, and are executed with great skill. "The Snow Flake," "Leaflets of Memory," and "The Proverbialist and the Poet," are also deserving of high commendation. The last-mentioned, especially, is at beautifully-executed work, containing truly "sands of gold sifted from the flood of literature "-a very Bible of Proverbs from Solomon, Shakspeare, and Tupper, illustrated by parallel passages from other poets, and dedicated to the lovers of "sense, shortness, and salt."

THE LAST ARGUMENT.-Though Pitt's moral or physical courage never shrank from man, yet Sheridan was the antagonist with whom he evidently least desired to come into collision, and with whom the collision, when it did occur, was of the most fretful nature. There were a thousand instances of that "keen encounter of their wits," in which person was more involved than party.

"I leave," said Pitt, at the conclusion of an

attack of this kind-"I leave the honorable gentleman what he likes so well, the woman's privilege-the last word."

"I am sensible," said Sheridan, "of the favor which the right honorable gentleman means, in offering me a privilege so peculiarly adapted to himself; but I must beg leave to decline the gift. I have no wish for the last word; I am content with having the last argument."

THERE is something romantic in the origin, of this book. The author, a young Prussian, who had been several years in England, was studying at Oxford in the autumn of 1848. It was the crisis of the Berlin revolution, and the road in which things were going was not one which any honest German heart could expect to find issue in anything but the most mournful disaster. Dr. Pauli sought and found a remedy against his uneasy thoughts in increased activity in his own occupations, and gradually what he had devoted himself to, to dissipate his anxiety, rewarded him with an interest which peculiarly softened

and relieved it.

His proper business at Oxford was with the old Saxon manuscripts; and as he read them more and more carefully, the figure of the greatest of the early English kings rose before him, as of one who, in a storm far worse than any present storm, had risen over it, and swayed and controlled it; who was a man in the strong sense of that most preg: nant word, and on whom he might look and be ashamed of his despondency.

The work begun in this temper is now finished, written, as its author tells us, for Germans, and in the German spirit, and for the present is only in the German language; but we can hardly conceive that the English publishers will pass by such an opportunity of a profitable speculation, and allow it to remain long untranslated.

"My aim (he says) has been to delineate, to the best of my ability, out of such anthorities as can best be trusted, the exalted position which Alfred occupies in the organic development of the liberties of England. I am well aware of the defects in my work-defects which remain, and which must remain, after all my efforts at revision. They arise partly out of the necessity I was under to combine original inquiry with narrative of what is already known; partly out of my own want of skill in supplying the defectiveness of my authorities by a workmanlike style of writing;

König Aelfred, und Seine Stelle in der Geschichte England. Von Dr. Reinhold Pauli. Berlin: 1851. London: bei Williams and Norgate.

and no doubt there are faults in criticism tooyet, such as they are, they result not from indolence and carelessness, but from that partial love for my subject which is certain to produce them."

Now we do not intend to affront Dr. Pauli with the panegyrics of the book trade, with telling him that he underrates himself, that he has written a perfect book, that he has exhausted the subject, left nothing to be said, &c. &c.; but after all the objections which we shall have to urge, the result will appear hardly less than wonderful, considering the materials with which he had to work. The life of Alfred, as we read it in Hume, or in Sharon Turner, is scarcely more than a mass of legend, which vanishes under an industrious criticism; and at best it is but a vague conjectural business, where we can hardly have his own word for it. assure ourselves of anything except when we

It is only of rarely recurring periods that any real history is possible; and the intervals have to be filled as we can fill them, with lists of names, and dates, and battles; a few marked events, with here and there a charter or a law code, lying as lonely rock islands of fact, in the midst of buge desolate oceans, with cloudy legends over them and round them. Ages like those of Pericles and Cæsar are illuminated with everburning lamps-historians, poets, philosophers, statesmen, dramatists, artists, all contemporary with what they describe, and throwing cross lights on all sides and on all figures while the long centuries of Saxon history are lighted only by faint cloister tapers, thinly scattered along the generations, often far away from what we try to see by them, and the shadows which they throw are strange, and dim, and unearthly. Dr. Pauli has had nothing to depend upon except Asser's Life of Alfred, the Saxon Chronicle, and a few autobiographical fragments; and at first sight Asser seems hopelessly interpolated, and at first sight too, the Saron Chronicle yields nothing but a list of battles, following year after year, one as like another as Livy's old wearying irruptions of the

Equi and Volsci. As soon as we leave them, we pass at once into the purely legendary, and the story rolls down along the chroniclers, gathering up into itself just what each writer thought best assimilated with Alfred's character; history faring with the chronicler as physical science fared with the schoolmen, and being put together on the grandest a priori method. So that to find any real human features left remaining, after the rubbish of critical demolition is cleared away, may well surprise us; still more to find any so clear and detailed and delicate as some of those which Dr. Pauli has laid open

to us.

Before giving an account of his work, however, we will first get rid of the disagreeable part of our business, and dispose of the points on which we are at issue with him. And, first, as to Asser's Life. It is known to have been very largely interpolated out of a Life of St. Neot, or by the author of that Life, somewhere towards the end of the tenth century. The more gross of these interpolations are easily eliminated, but after that is done, the beginning of the story remains full of contradictions, which it is impossible to reconcile. Dr. Pauli would make his way through them by supposing that large paragraphs have got out of place, and tries to construct a consecutive story by an alteration of the order of the text. He loves Alfred's memory too dearly to sacrifice a single trait if he can help it; yet his theory is thoroughly unsatisfactory, and for anything we have yet seen, the whole story of Alfred's childhood remains unhistoric. Here is an instance. His mother is described by Asser as religiosa nimirum fœmina, nobilis ingenio, nobilis et genere. One day, we are told, the boy Alfred was playing with his brothers in her presence, when she called them all to her, and showed them an illuminated volume of Saxon Poems," whichever of you children (said she) will first learn to read this, shall have it for a present." On this, Alfred went off to his tutor, told him what had been said, and applying himself with all diligence to the work, in a short time earned for himself the beautiful book. . . . . Now we will not speak hardly of the internal merit of this anecdote; it is the sort of thing which a monk would think edifying, and Dr. Pauli seems to admire it. Is there any reason, however, to believe it true? First, there is the startling difficulty that the same writer, calling himself Asser, declares that Alfred was entirely neglected by his parents, and taught nothing; and then we have his own

word that he could not read before he was twelve years old. . . . Dr. Pauli gets out of the difficulty by supposing that the tutor in question taught him to repeat the poems by heart, and that the neglectful parent was Judith, his father's second wife. Sharon Turner, on the other hand, pushes forward the story; supposes the kind mother to have been Judith, the step-mother, and the neglectful one his own proper mother. . Against both of these suggestions we must enter our protest. According to Dr. Pauli, Alfred went to Rome when he was four years old, and the story could not well be referred to an earlier period; while it is scarcely possible, if he did take this journey, that he could ever have seen his mother again; while Judith had married a second time, and left his father's house and family before Alfred was eight. . . . And more than this, who could the children be who were playing with him? His sister, Ethelswitha, who was the child next above him, was marriageable when he was little more than able to walk; and his brothers were grown up warriors before he could have learnt to repeat a poem.

This Judith, too, is a mest apocryphal lady. Mr. Kemble tells us, that by a third marriage, she became the mother of Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, a fact about as probable or possible as that a present English duke is the son of a mistress of Charles the Second. Dr. Pauli would help out the difficulty by inserting a link, and calling her the grandmother instead of the mother; but he has not mended it, and it must remain as it is.

And again, curiously, one of the passages which he selects as characteristic of the genuine Asser, and in virtue of which he concludes him to have been a person of highly cultivated taste, he will find word for word (or nearly so) in one of the lives of that very St. Neot who has led to all this trouble-so vitiated Asser's text has been-for this passage does not occur in the portion of the story which refers to this saint, but in the directly descriptive narrative which belongs only to Alfred.

Then, as to the Saxon Chronicle, Dr. Pauli says, that it was made up in the form in which we now read it, down to the year 891, either in that year, or at any rate before the close of the century. If this be so, it is, of course, a high authority; and the evidence that it is so, is the style of writing in a MS. now extant, which is declared to belong to that period. Dr. Pauli is a far bet