than its predecessor, has in it all the elements of a
similar success. The two longest poems, "The Money-King" and "The
Press," have been put to the severe test of repeated delivery before
lyceum audiences in different parts of the country; and a poet is
sure to learn by such a method of publication, what he may not learn
by an appearance in print, the real judgment of the miscellaneous
public on his performance. He may doubt the justice of the praise or
the censure of the professional critic; but it is hard for him to
resist the fact of failure, when it comes to him palpably in the
satire that scowls in an ominous stare and the irony that lurks in an
audible yawn,--hard for him to question the reality of triumph, when
teeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touch
of his sentiment. Having tried each of these poems before more than a
hundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly earned the right to face
critics fearlessly; and, indeed, the poems themselves so abound in
sense, shrewdness, sagacity, and fancy, in sayings so pithy and wit
so sparkling, are so lull of humor and good-humor, and flow on their
rhythmic and rhyming way with so much of the easy abandonment of
vivacious conversation, that few critics will desire to reverse the
favorable decisions of the audiences they have enlivened.

Among the miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy,
in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety of
versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure
love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred.
We have found the great majority of them exceedingly exhilarating
reading, and, if our limits admitted an extended examination, we feel
sure that the result of the analysis would be the eliciting of
unexpected merits rather than the detection of hidden defects.

* * * * *

_Say and Seal_. By the Author of "Wide, Wide World," and the Author
of "Dollars and Cents." In Two Volumes. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott
& Co.

Another story from "Elizabeth Wetherell" is a welcome addition to our
scanty stock of American, novels. Our real American novels may be
counted on our fingers, while the tales that claim the name may be
weighed by the ton. At the present time, we count Hawthorne among our
novelists, and Mrs. Stowe, and perhaps Curtis, since his "Trumps";
but as for our thousand and one unrivalled authors, "whose matchless
knowledg