pedient to give this reality, when our authors bring
in pet names, and other "love-lispings," which are sacred in privacy
and painfully ridiculous when exposed to the curious light. Many of
us readers find all this mawkish and silly, and others of us are
pained that to such scrutiny should be exposed the dearest secrets of
affection, and are not anxious to have them exposed to our own gaze.
It is too trying a confidence, too high an honor, to be otherwise
than unwelcome. With this criticism we close our notice of "Say and
Seal," in which we have been sparing neither of praise nor blame,
earnestly thanking the authors for a book that is worth finding fault
with.

* * * * *

_How Could He Help It? or, The Heart Triumphant_. By A.S. ROE. New
York: Derby & Jackson.

A fair representative of a class of books that are always pleasant
reading, although written without taste, cultivation, or
originality,--because they are obviously dictated by a kind heart and
genuine earnestness. In this volume the numerous heroes (so similar
in every respect that one might fancy them to be only one hero
mysteriously multiplied, like Kehama) and the fair heroines (exactly
equalling the heroes in number, we are happy to assure the
tenderhearted reader) are not in the least interesting, except for
sheer goodness of heart. This unaided moral excellence, however,
fairly redeems the book, and so far softens even our critical
asperity that we venture only to suggest,--first, that the utterly
unprecedented _patois_ of Mrs. Kelly is not Irish, for which a
careful examination of the context leads us to think it was
intended,--secondly, that "if he had have done it" is equally
guiltless of being English,--thirdly, that, if our author, desiring to
describe the feelings of a lover holding his mistress's hand, was
inspired by Tennyson's phrase of "dear wonder," he failed, in our
opinion, to improve on his original, when he substituted "the fleshy
treasure in his grasp."

* * * * *

_The New Tariff-Bill_. Washington. 1860.

We do not propose to submit the English of this new literary effort
of the House of Representatives at Washington to a critical
examination, (though it strikingly reminds us of some of the poems of
Mr. Whitman, and is a very fair piece of descriptive verse in the
_b'hoy_-anergic style,) or to attempt any argument on the vexed
question of Protection. But there is a sec