The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-04 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

New America. By W. Hepworth Dixon. Eighth
Edition. One Vol., pp. 418. Hurst and

Blackett.

As the Sixty-Seventli Volume of the famous
Standard Library of the Messrs. Hurst and Blackett,
there ha, just now been republished, in a cheap and
popular form, Hepworth Dixon's brilliant work on
New America." Although merely two years
have sped by since that book made its first appear-
ance, it has already—within those two years—
passed, in various languages through FORTY Edi-
tions ! The present is the Eighth Edition in Eng-
land alone : but, translated into different tongues,
it has, within twenty-four months appeared in as
many as Forty separate editions altogether. A
success like this is almost, if it be not, indeed,
absolutely, without precedent. The simple record
of the fact is beyond any eulogium. it in licates,
to say the least of it, that the author au ler-
stands his own epoch so thoroughly well that he
can, readily an 1 with ease, eimmand
the attention of his contempo:aries. Mr.
Dixon—it will be remembered by all those who have
already any knowledge of the particular work under
notice—paid a flying
visit to the United States,
penetrated as far west as the Salt L tke City, made
the acquaintance of Brigham Young, and scanned
the astonishingly strange polygamous system of
Mormonism, viewing everything as it seemed with
the most fugitive, superficial glance: and yet, coming
homewards again within a few weeks,contriel to pass
through the press a couple of volumes full of new and
carefully authenticated facts—facts that, when they
come to be grouped together symmetrically in the
sixty-six chapters, making up the sum total of his
work called " New America," presented that New
America to the gaze first of all of Old England and
afterwards of Old Europe, with the clearness, dis-
tinctness, andininuteness of- a aerie; of photographs.
Bleeding Kansas, the Prairies, Bitter Creek, New
Jerusalem, Polygamy, and Pantagamy, the
Shaker House and the Bible Family, Fetntle
Seers and Spiritual Cycles; Manners, Liberties,
Politica, Colour, Union, Reconstruction—all passed
before U 3, as we turned his pages, like the unroll-
ing of some curious and wonderful panot arna. Re-
membering the vivacity with which the book is
written throughout, the boldness and precision of
its author's opinions upon everything and every-
body coming in turn there under his observation,
the vivid picturesqueness of his descriptions, and
the animation of the work, as a whole, from the
first page almost uninterruptedly to the last—for
there is certainly not one dull chapter that could
he named—we cannot wonder that it has been read
with avidity, though we cannot but marvel at the
same time at the rapidity with which so many edi-
tions have been exhausted within so brief an
interval The author did the like two or
three years previously by the Holy Land—and,
it should be said, with co irreverent footstep—
as he tro l swiftly across the sicred ground of Pales-
tine. Through New Atnetin, ho.vever, he sped at
a more rattling pac traversing it in a manner
helter-skelter from en 3 to end—going " there and
back agliu" as though lie ha I been shod with the
shoes of swiftness. Possessing this graphic result
of Mr. Dixon's travels through "New Ametica,"
the veriest stay-at-home among us, the most un-
travelled of EngliAimen, may—thanks to our
author's shrewd ob ervation, and h s singularly
realtet:c powers of description, view by proxy
throtigh these pages, while seated ,lippered ease,
in his arm chair at home, the free fre6ii nt!,v life of
Young America, in all it-s manifold ::rid multiform
phases. The lnok is worth storing up to:t the
book-shelf for after r,fere,nce, anti it I; s never ap-
peared iu a more preservable or a more presentable
form than in the Eighth Edition, in which it is
here republished.