y have
become so mainly by mingling their blood with that of their negroes,--a
race never so useful and happy as when in the discipline of slavery. Mr.
Codman contrasts their hopeless state on the lands of a good-hearted
Scotchman in Brazil, who intends to let them earn their freedom by
working for him, with their condition on the neighboring estate of a
sharp, slave-driving Yankee, who acquiesces unmurmuringly in the
purposes of Providence; "his theory being, that, as labor is their
condition, the greatest amount of work compatible with their health and
fair endurance is to be got from them. With this end in view, there is a
judicious distribution of rewards and punishments." Mr. Codman finds the
charm of novelty in these just and simple ideas, but we think we have in
past years met with the same ingenious reasoning in Southern speeches
and newspapers; and we suspect the system was one commonly adopted in
our slave States, where the occasional omission of punishments was
economically made to represent the judicious distribution of rewards.

In fact, Mr. Codman seems to have travelled and written too late to
benefit his generation. Six or seven happy years ago, an enlightened
public sentiment would have received his views of slavery with acclaim;
but we doubt if they would now sell a copy of his book even in
Charleston.

_A Story of Doom, and other Poems._ By JEAN INGELOW. Boston:
Roberts Brothers.

People who remember things written as long ago as five years have a
certain stiffness in their tastes which disqualifies them for the
enjoyment of much contemporaneous achievement; and it is fortunate for
the poets that it is the young who make reputations. Miss Ingelow's
first volume, indeed, had something in it that could please not only the
inexperience of youth, for which nothing like it existed, but even the
knowledge of those arrived at the interrogation-point in life, who felt
that here there was a movement toward originality in much familiar
mannerism and uncertain purpose. If there was not a vast deal for
enjoyment, there was a reason for hope. It was plain that the author's
gift was not a great one, but it was also clear that she had a gift. She
was a little tedious and diffuse; she was often too long in reaching a
point, and sometimes she never reached it at all. But then she wrote
"The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," and the "Songs of Seven,"
and "Divided,"--none of them perfect poems, yet