American resistance:--"Englishmen have made sublime sacrifices to
principle, but they appear slow to believe that any other people can."
And, "George III. sat upon a constitutional throne, but he had an
unconstitutional mind." It would be difficult to find a more
comprehensive sentence than the following:--"The counsel employed by Mr.
Mauduit was Alexander Wedderburn, a sharp, unprincipled Scotch
barrister, destined to scale all the heights of preferment which
shameless subserviency could reach."

It would be easy to multiply examples, but we have given, we believe,
more than enough to show that we look upon Mr. Parton's "Franklin" as a
work of very great value.

_The Maine Woods._ By HENRY D. THOREAU, Author of "A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers," "Walden," "Excursions," etc., etc. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields.

The steadily growing fame of Thoreau has this characteristic, that it
is, like his culture, a purely American product, and is no pale
reflection of the cheap glories of an English reprint. Whether he would
have gained or lost by a more cosmopolitan training or criticism is not
the question now; but certain it is that neither of these things went to
the making of his fame. Classical and Oriental reading he had; but
beyond these he cared for nothing which the men and meadows of Concord
could not give, and for this voluntary abnegation, half whimsical, half
sublime, the world repaid him with life-long obscurity, and will yet
repay him with permanent renown.

His choice of subjects, too, involves the same double recompense; for no
books are less dazzling or more immortal than those whose theme is
external Nature. Nothing else wears so well. History becomes so rapidly
overlaid with details, and its aspects change so fast, that the most
elaborate work soon grows obsolete; while a thoroughly sincere and
careful book on Nature cannot be superseded, and lives forever. Its
basis is real and permanent. There will always be birds and flowers,
nights and mornings. The infinite fascinations of mountains and of
forests will outlast this war, and the next, and the race that makes the
war. The same solidity of material which has guarantied permanence to
the fame of Izaak Walton and White of Selborne will as surely secure
that of Thoreau, who excels each of these writers upon his own ground,
while superadding a wider culture, a loftier thought, and a fine, though
fantastic, literary skill. All men may not love Nature