th at Great Bethel. The
condensed, lucid, picturesque, and sharp-cut sentences, flooded with
will, show the nature of the man,--a man who announced no sentiments and
principles he was not willing to sacrifice himself to disseminate or
defend. A living energy of soul glows over the whole book,--swift,
fiery, brave, wholesome, sincere, impatient of all physical obstacles to
the operation of thought and affection, and eager to make stubborn facts
yield to the impatient pressure of spiritual purpose.

We cannot say much in praise of the plot of "John Brent," but it at
least enables the author to supply a good framework for his incidents,
descriptions, and characters. The plot is based rather on possibilities
than probabilities; but the men and women he depicts are thoroughly
natural. It would be difficult to point to any other American novel
which furnishes incidents that can compare in vigor and vividness
with some of the incidents in this romance. The ride to rescue Helen
Clitheroe from her kidnappers is a masterpiece, worthy to rank with the
finest passages of Cooper or Scott. The fierce, swift black stallion,
"Don Fulano," a horse superior to any which Homer has immortalized, is
almost the hero of the romance. That Winthrop, with all his sympathy
with the "advanced" ideas and sentiments of the reformers and
philanthropists of the time, was not a mere prattling and scribbling
sentimentalist, is proved by his glorious idealization of this
magnificent horse. He raises the beast into a moral and intellectual
sympathy with his human rider, and there is a poetic justice in making
him die at last in an attempt to further the escape of a fugitive slave.

The characterization of the book is original. Gerrian, Jake Shamberlain,
Armstrong, Sizzum, the Mormon preacher, are absolutely new creations.
Hugh Clitheroe may suggest Dickens's Skimpole and Hawthorne's Clifford,
but the character is developed under entirely new circumstances. As for
Wade and Brent, they are persons whom we all recognize as the old heroes
of romance, though the conditions under which they act are changed.
Helen, the heroine of the story, is a more puzzling character to the
critic; but, on the whole, we are bound to say that she is a new
development of womanhood. The author exhausts all the resources of his
genius in giving a "local habitation and a name" to this fond creation
of his imagination, and he has succeeded. Helen Clitheroe promises to be
one of tho