ined in
greater degree in the same direction. It would not be just to say that
Paulding's style was formed upon that of Irving; but both had given
their days and nights to the virtuous poverty of the essayists of the
last century; and while one grew into something fresher and more
original by dint of long and constant literary effort, the other,
writing only occasionally, remained an old-fashioned mannerist to the
last. When he died, he passed out of a world in which Macaulay, Dickens,
Thackeray, and Hawthorne had never lived. The last delicacy of touch is
wanting in all his work, whether verse or prose; yet the reader, though
unsatisfied, does not turn from it without respect. If it is
second-rate, it is not tricksy; its dulness is not antic, but decorous
and quiet; its dignity, while it bores, enforces a sort of reverence
which we do not pay to the ineffectual fire-works of our own more
pyrotechnic literary time.

Of Paulding himself one thinks, after reading the present memoir, with
much regard and some regret. He was a sturdy patriot and cordial
democrat, but he seems not to have thought human slavery so very bad a
thing. He is perceptibly opinionated, and would have carried things with
a high hand, whether as one of the government or one of the governed. He
was not swift to adopt new ideas, but he was thoroughly honest in his
opposition to them. His somewhat exaggerated estimate of his own
importance in the world of letters and of politics was one of those
venial errors which time readily repairs.

_History and General Description of New France._ By the Rev. P. F. X. DE
CHARLEVOIX, S. J. Translated, with Notes, by JOHN GILMARY SHEA. New
York: J. G. Shea. Vol. I.

Charlevoix's "History of New France" is very well known to all who study
American history in its sources. It is a well-written, scholarlike, and
readable book, treating of a subject which the author perfectly
understood, and of which he may be said to have been a part. Tried by
the measure of his times, his research was thorough and tolerably exact.
The work, in short, has always been justly regarded as a "standard," and
very few later writers have thought it necessary to go beyond or behind
it. Appended to it is a journal of the author's travels in America, in
the form of a series of letters to the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, full of
interest, and a storehouse of trustworthy information.

Charlevoix had been largely quoted and extensively read. Not to