rs of the Revolutionary War. He lets us see his hero
cock-fighting, horse-racing, bad-whiskey-drinking, studying law, and
fighting by turns, leaving behind him somewhat dubious but on the
whole favorable memories, yet somehow getting on, till he is appointed
District-Attorney among the wolves, wildcats, and redskins of Tennessee.
The story of his emigration thither and his early life there is
wonderfully picturesque, and told by Mr. Parton with the spirit which
only sympathy can give.

A great part of the material is wholly new, and we are at last enabled
to get at the real Jackson, and to gain something like an adequate and
consistent conception, of him. We are particularly glad to learn
the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and
misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble,
instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and
only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of
the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from
the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us
new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the sad story of Arbuthnot
and Ambrister, and throws a great deal of light on many points of our
political history which much needed honest illumination. The book is of
especial interest at the present time, as it contains the best narrative
we have ever seen of the Nullification troubles of 1832. Mr. Parton not
only shows a decided talent for biography, but his work is characterized
by a thoroughness of research and honesty of purpose that make it, on
the whole, the best life yet written of any of our public men.

_Poems_. By ROSE TERRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 231.

We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes
"Prose by a Poet," in order that the public might be put on their guard
as to the difference between it and the others,--inexperienced critics
are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following,
and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages,
we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be
bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised "The
Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,"--"Essays to do Good,
by a Victim of Original Sin,"--"Poems by a Proser,"--"Political Economy,
by a Bankrupt," and the like. We should know, at least, what we had to