# The Knickerbocker/Volume 13/Number 5/American Reviews

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​American Reviews.—have the New-York and North American Reviews, for the April quarter; but must again indicate, rather than appropriately notice, their contents. They are both good numbers; and as Americans, we are quite willing to have them perused abroad, as fair specimens of our quarterly literature. Beside the 'Quarterly Chronicle' of political events, scientific movements, etc., and the usual collection of brief critical notices, in which we remark both fearlessness and good taste, the New-York Review has eleven articles proper, embracing an agreeable variety of topic and style. A well-reasoned article on literary property and international copy-right, opens the number, which is followed by a review of the life and character of the late Nathaniel Bowditch; of the Historical Address of William B. Reed, Esq., of Philadelphia, upon the congress of 1774; and of that excellent American work of Mr. Herring, the 'National Portrait Gallery.' Dwight's Poems from the German of Göethe and Schiller, are next considered; and to this somewhat brief paper, succeeds a review of recent Reports of British Scientific Associations, and the initiatory proceedings of a similar, but as yet incipient, society in Boston, termed 'The American Institution for the Cultivation of Science;' and this is followed by a notice of Harrison's 'Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio.' The four remaining articles, of which we have found leisure to peruse but the second-named, are, a notice of Keith on the Truth of Christianity; a very interesting and well-written review of Modern French Romance; 'Translations of the Book of Job,' and a paper, evincing much research, and embodying a large amount of useful and admonitory facts, upon steam-boat explosions in the United States.
In the 'North American,' we have, beside seventeen minor critical notices, and the usual quarterly list of new publications, eleven articles. The first is on the Italian Historians; the second, one of the best informed judgments of Southey's genius and productions that we remember to have seen; the third, a notice of works by Goodrich and Taylor on Domestic Education; the fourth, a review of poems by Kenyon, a ​young writer of Cambridge, England, who well deserves the title of poet, if the ex- quisite passages quoted by the reviewer be fair examples of his verse at large; the fifth, is a paper upon the beet-sugar manufacture, for the perusal of which we confess we did not 'agnize a prompt alacrity;' the sixth, an appreciating estimate of La Chute d'un Ange, by Lamartine; the seventh, a notice of Freytag's Arabic Lexicon; and the eighth, a review of 'The Life and Times of the Rev. George Whitfield,' to us one of the most interesting articles in the number, touching upon the early history, education, and progress of that remarkable minister; the character of his eloquence, and his modes of preaching; and tracing his itinerant career through England, Scotland, and America. The 'Blue Laws of the Old States' are next discussed, to which succeeds a notice of the same German poems that are reviewed in the New-York Quarterly. We are glad to perceive, that the reviewer's enthusiasm does not lend his to the affectation of descrying new beauties in vague, shadowy, and indistinct Germanosities, if we may coin a word to express our meaning. Apropos to this, there in an admirable caustic paper in the February number of Blackwood's Magazine, entitled 'A Discourse on Göethe and the Germans,' to the truth sad justice of which we mast fully subscribe. These enthusiastic admirations of peculiar 'schools' of literature are periodical. Young as we are, we have seen some half dozen manias of this description subside into neglect, and ultimate indifference, and in some instances, contempt. The eleventh and last article, is a review of Wetmore's Gazeteer of Missouri; but 'farther of its matter can we not report'—principally because we have not read it.