The Express.
London, England, 1861-03-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

sse Vernier. A Romatiat of Destiny. By OUT=
WINDILL HOULE& Macmillan 11111 d CO.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is already favourably
known to the English reading public by two plea-
sant books—" The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table" and " The Professor at the Breakfast
Table." In both of these works there are the
originality of thought, freshness of observation,
and catholic breadth of sympathy which distin-
guish the most vigorous literature of America from
that of the old country, as well as the occasional
transcendentalism and grandiloquence, and a cer-
tain want of dignity and reticence, by which the
former so frequently offends the taste and excites 1
the ridicule of English readers. Those who areac-
quainted with the works just mentioned, and like
them, will find a good deal of their quality diffused
through this story, while to novel readers gene-
rally, chiefly solicitous about plot, characters, die.,
it Duty be safely recommended as an unusually in-'
teresting and clever story of American life.
The first thing that strikes one in "Elsie Venner"
i. the similarity of its leading idea to that of the
author's counturnan, Mr. Hawthorne's " Trans-
formation." We do not know whether this story,
which was originally published in the Atlantic
Munthly Itcanne, appeared before or after Mr.
Hawthorne's novel, but it seems to us that the
resemblance is too close to be accidental. In
" Truunforiustluu" we had . young Italian, Win..
largely partook of the nature of a fawn, from
which it is hinted, or suggested, orperhaps explicitly
stated—we forget which—he was lineally
In " Elsie Veneer" we have • young American
girl exhibiting in appearance and disposition a very
decided dash of the rattlesnake—by which creature,
it comes out at last, her mother had been fatally
bitten before Elsie 's birth. The manner, too, in
which the ides is carried out—the confused and
doubtful impression which it is nought to create in
the reader's mind—is the same in Dr. Holnies's as
in Mr. Hawthorne's story. The similarity is too
noticeable to be passed over, and though it is of
little consequence which can claim originality in
the matter, we wish to utter a word of protest,
apart from the physiological questions involved,
against what appears to be a growing tendency in
American writers of fiction to overstep the modesty
of nature by the introduction into their works of
these unnatural and monstrous elements.

Of the story itself, which is of very simple con-
struction, we shall say no more than that it gives a
full and vivid, and, we doubt not, correct descrip-
tion of the sort of life that is led and the sort of
characters that are to be met with in small country
towns in certain parts of the United States. The
English reader cannot fail to be amused by a state
of society that is at once simpler and more artificial,
more affected and more pretentious, but more
transparent, both in its affectations and in its pre-
tensions, than that of his own country, as
well as by some of the standards of " gentility "
which are alluded to as accepted and familiar.
It is a mark of good breeding, for in-
stance, we are informed, to be able to
pronounce the word "view," while a whole class of
outer barbarians is considered sufficiently indicated
as the people who keep a "kerridge." In this re-
spect, though wanting the poetical grace and ten-
derness of that charming story " Elsie Venner " is
more like Mr. Longfellow's "Kavanagh" than any
other book equally well known on this side of the
Atlantic.

It is not, however, as a work of fiction that this
book possesses its chief interest Those who have
read his other works know that Dr. Holmes has
merits both as a thinker and as an observes of
society which niake the frequent disquisition on
social, philosophical, and religious questions on
which it is his habit to indulge valuable not only
in itself, but as indicative of the state of opinion,
on many most important subjects, of the
freest and most thoughtful minds among
his countrymen. Of course, to a certain
extent, whether by reflection or by collateral
development, or both, the newer forms and direc-
tions of thought in the younger branch of the
family resemble those of the elder, but they are
equally worth studying in their likeness and in
their difference. Hare is the American version of
our muscular Christianity. The young gentleman
here described is not, as might be ignorantly sup-
posed, Mr. John C. Heenan in training, but a
model teacher in an " educational institute :"
Hs who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking
upon Mr. Bernard Langdon the next morning, when his
toilet was about half finished, would have had • vary plea-
sant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the strap el
his trousers pretty tightly ; then he took up a patrol heavy
dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two
great " Indian clubs," with which he enacted all sorts of
impossible•looking feat. His limbs were not veiy large,
nor his shoulders remarkably broad ; but if you knew as
much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and
pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned, if you
knew the trope:kis, lying diansond-shisped over the back
and shoulders like a monk's cowl, or the deltoid, which
caps the shoulder like au epaulette, or the triceps which
furnishes the calf of the upper arm, or the hard•knotted
biceps—any of the great seuiptural landmarks, In foot—
you would have mid the. was a minty show of thaw be.
Death the white satiny skin of Mr. Bernard Landau; sod
if you had seen him, when be had laid down the Indian
clubs, catch hold of • leather strap that hung from the beam
of the old.fashioned coiling, and lift and lower himself over
and over again by his loft hand akin', you might have
thought it • very simple and easy thing to do, until you
tried to do it yourself. Mr. Bernard looked at blineelf with
the eye of an expert. " Pretty well !" be said " not so
much faller lieu off I expected.* Then he set op his bolster
in a very knowing soft of way, and delivered two or three
blows straight se rules and swift as "Wks. " That will
do," be said. Then, as if determined to make a es:Linty
of his condition, he took a dysemouseter from one of the