expect.

We do not mean to apply this to Miss Terry; but her volume reminded us,
by the association of opposites, of the title to which we have referred.
We had long known her as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as
one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding
in humor and pathos; but we had never conceived her as a writer of
verse. The readers of the "Atlantic" remember too well her "Maya, the
Princess," "Metempsychosis," and "The Sphinx's Children," to need
reminding that she has qualities of fancy as remarkable as her faculty
for observing real life. Miss Terry seems in this volume to have sought
refuge from the real in the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the
outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being.
Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they
are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of
her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind
moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque
than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is
really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is a poem full
of originality and vigor, with that suggestion of deepest meaning which
is so much more effective than definite statement. "December XXXI."
gives us a new and delightful treatment of a subject which the poets
have made us rather shy of by their iteration. We would signalize also,
as an especial favorite of ours, "The Two Villages," and still more the
very striking poem "At Last." But, after all, we are not sure that the
Ballads are not the best pieces in the volume. The "Frontier Ballads,"
in particular, quiver with strength and spirit, and have the true
game-flavor of the border.

_Harrington_. By the Author of "What Cheer?" Boston: Thayer & Eldridge.

One of the most impossible books that man ever wrote. A book which one
could almost prove never could be written, and which, as an illogical
conclusion, but a stubborn fact, has been written, nevertheless.
"Harrington" is an Abolition novel, the scene of which is laid in
Boston, with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in
Louisiana. Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and
purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism. Whenever the warm,
pulse of an author's heart can be felt through the texture of his story,
criticism is mere flippancy. But,