vacity, the fun shading down to seriousness, and the
seriousness up to fun, in perpetual and charming vicissitude;--here was
the man of culture, of scientific training, the man who had thought as
well as felt, and who had fixed purposes and sacred convictions. No, the
Eclipse-comparison is too trifling. This was a stout ship under press
of canvas; and however the phosphorescent star-foam of wit and fancy,
crowding up under her bows or gliding away in subdued flashes of
sentiment in her wake, may draw the eye, yet she has an errand of duty;
she carries a precious freight, she steers by the stars, and all her
seemingly wanton zigzags bring her nearer to port.

When children have made up their minds to like some friend of the
family, they commonly besiege him for a story. The same demand is made
by the public of authors, and accordingly it was made of Dr. Holmes. The
odds were heavy against him; but here again he triumphed. Like a good
Bostonian, he took for his heroine a _schoolma'am_, the Puritan Pallas
Athene of the American Athens, and made her so lovely that everybody was
looking about for a schoolmistress to despair after. Generally, the best
work in imaginative literature is done before forty; but Dr. Holmes
should seem not to have found out what a Mariposa grant Nature had made
him till after fifty.

There is no need of our analyzing "Elsie Venner," for all our readers
know it as well as we do. But we cannot help saying that Dr. Holmes has
struck a new vein of New-England romance. The story is really a romance,
and the character of the heroine has in it an element of mystery; yet
the materials are gathered from every-day New-England life, and that
weird borderland between science and speculation where psychology and
physiology exercise mixed jurisdiction, and which rims New England as
it does all other lands. The character of Elsie is exceptional, but not
purely ideal, like Cristabel and Lamia. In Doctor Kittredge and his
"hired man," and in the Principal of the "Apollinean Institoot," Dr.
Holmes has shown his ability to draw those typical characters that
represent the higher and lower grades of average human nature; and in
calling his work a Romance he quietly justifies himself for mingling
other elements in the composition of Elsie and her cousin. Apart from
the merit of the book as a story, it is full of wit, and of sound
thought sometimes hiding behind a mask of humor. Admirably conceived are
the two clergymen