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

LITERATURE.

New America. By W. Hepworth axon. Eighth
Edition. One Vol., Pr. 418. Hurst and

Blackett.

As the Sixty-Seventh Volume of the famous
Standard Library of the Messrs. Hurst and Blackett,
tht re hal 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, in iced,
absolutely, without precedent. The simple record
of the fact is beyond any eulogiutn. It indic rtes,
to say the least of it, that the author under-
stands his own epoch so thoroughly well. that he
can, readily and with ease, c3mmand
the attention of his contemporaries. 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 Yourg, and scanned
the astonishingly strange polygamous system of
Mormonism, viewiilg everything as it seemed with
the most fugitive, saperficial glance: and yet, cowing
homewards again within a few weeks, contrived to pass
through the press a couple of volumes full of new and
carefully authenticated facts—facts that, when they
cume 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, and minuteness of a series of photographs.
Bleeding Kansas, the Prairies, Bitter Creek, New
Jerusalem, Polygamy, and Pantagamy, the
Shaker House and the Bible Fathily, Female
Seers and Spiritual Cycles, Alanners, Liberties,
Politics, Colour, Union, Reconstruction--all passed
before U 3, as we turned his pages, like the unroll-
ing of some curious and wonderful panorama. Re-
membering the vivacity with which the book is
written throughout, the boldness and precision of
its author's opinions upon every thing 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
&onetime at the rapidity with which so many edi-
tions have been exhausted withia so brief au
interval The author did the like two or
three years previously by the Holy Land—and,
it should be said, with no irreverent footstep—
as he trod swiftly across the sacred ground of Pales-
tine. Through New America,, however, he sped at
a more rattling pace, traversing it in a manner
helter-skelter from cal to end—going " there and
back again" as though he had been shod with the
shoes of swiftness. Possessing this graphic result
of Mr. Dixon's travels through " New America,"
the veriest stay-at-home among its, the most uu-
travelled of Englishmen, may—thanks to our
author's shrewd ob ervation, and h s singularly
re:II:Ale powers of description, i
voe .v by Fr ocy
through these pages, hile seated. t•lipp rea ea-e,
in his arm chair at Lome, the free fresh new lite of
Young America, in all its manifold e. nd multiform
phases. The book is worth storing up on the
book-shelf for after reference, and it has never ap-
peared in a more preservable or a more presentable
form than in the Eighth Edition, in which it is
here republished.