n being a
little metaphysical and over-fine. What he means for his more
elevated characters are tiresome with something of that melodramatic
sentimentality with which Mr. Dickens has infected so much of the
lighter literature of the day. Here and there the style suffers from
that overmuchness of unessential detail and that exaggeration of
particulars which Mr. Dickens brought into fashion and seems bent on
wearing out of it,--a style which is called graphic and poetical by
those only who do not see that it is the cheap substitute, in all
respects equal to real plate, (till you try to pawn it for lasting
fame,) introduced by writers against time, or who forget that to be
graphic is to tell most with fewest penstrokes, and to be poetical is
to suggest the particular in the universal. We earnestly hope, that,
instead of trying to do what no one can do well, Mr. Trowbridge will
wisely stick close to what he has shown that no one can do better.

"The Old Battle-Ground," whose name bears but an accidental relation to
the story, is an interesting and well-constructed tale, in which Mr.
Trowbridge has introduced what we believe is a new element in American
fiction, the French Canadian. The plot is simple and not too improbable,
and the characters well individualized. Here, also, Mr. Trowbridge
is most successful in his treatment of the less ambitiously designed
figures. The relation between the dwarf Hercules fiddler and the
heroine Marie seems to be a suggestion from Victor Hugo's Quasimodo and
Esmeralda, though the treatment is original and touching. Indeed, there
is a good deal of pathos in the book, marred here and there with the
sentimental extract of Dickens-flowers, unpleasant as _patchouli_.
Generally, however, it has the merit of unobtrusiveness,--a rare piece
of self-denial nowadays, when authors have found out, and the public has
not, how very easy it is to make the public cry, and how much the simple
creature likes it, as if it had not sorrows enough of its own. But it is
in his more ordinary characters that Mr. Trowbridge fairly shows himself
as an original and delightful author. His boys are always masterly.
Nothing could be truer to Nature, more nicely distinguished as to
idiosyncrasy, while alike in expression and in limited range of ideas,
or more truly comic, than the two that figure in this story. Nick
Whickson, too, the good-natured ne'er-do-well, who is in his own and
everybody's way till he finds his natur