The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-07-19 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

BOORS FOR REVIEW, &c.—Books, New Prints, Music, &c.
intended for review, may be left at Mr. C. Mitchell's, Red-
lion-court, Fleet-street, London, addressed " to the Editor
of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD," when they will be forwarded
and receive attention.

Babylon : Her Character and Doom. Liverpool :
George Philip and Son.

A few thoughts, nervously expressed and neatly
strung together, on the Papacy, proving it to be,
indeed, Satan's great effort to counteract Chris-
tianity. The author, Mr. William Maude (M. M.),
is favourably known to the religious world as the
author of " The Christian's Daily Portion," and
other small books on great subjects, which have
enjoyed immense popularity, and effected no trifling
amount of benefit upon the world.

Table-Turning and Table-Talking. London :
Henry Vizetelly.
To those who place implicit reliance on the
wildest theories of table-movers, and to the less
scrupulous persons who " don't believe a word of
it," this neat compilation will recommend itself
with equal force; for while the fqtwgrmmtralsi3ph:
of home and foreign theories and experiments, the
latter will find a valuable record of what he con-
siders (probably with justice) one of the most
melancholy chapters in the history of the human
kind. As in the rest of :kir. Vizetelly's publications,
the letter-press and engravings are prettily executed,
and the volume both tasteful and cheap.

Uncle Tom at Home. By F. C. Adams.
Clarke, Beeton, and Co.
__ . .

London

Mr. Adams, formerly a newspaper editor in South
Carolina, has come forward, and, in true American
fashion, supported by his own experience " the
terrible expositions," as he calls them, of the little
Yankee woman who has made the sorrows of Uncle
Tom familiar to the world. For the sake of the
slave and the slave-maker, the ex-editor from Char-
leston has dared 0) run a risk "larger than the law
can cover." His revelations, as coming from one
who had little to gain and everything to lose by
their publication, are valuable and interesting ; and
will, doubtless, enjoy a large measure of popularity
with the British public.

The Australian. London : Eyre and Williams.
This pamphlet contains a variety of practical
hints to intending emigrants, written by William
Crellin, a passenger by the Australian in June,
1852. It is all the more valuable from the circum-
stance that it is the letter of a plain-spoken intel-
ligent man, who writes to his friends only, and who
never contemplated that his production would be
placed in the printer's hands.

Free Blacks and Slaves. Liverpool Deighton and

Laughton.
This pamphlet, written by " A Cambridge Man,"
is a moderate and well-timed reply to the question,
Would immediate abolition be a blessing ? The
author answers this query in the negative, and sup-
ports his position at some length, by proving that
the free blacks or " masterless slaves" in America
are more degraded and worse treated than those in
bondage ; that the negro can never exist in a free
state where the white man has penetrated ; and that
the only hope for the "Uncle Toms" of the new
world is to ship them off to Liberia, there to live
under the reign of their own happy Emperor, the
sooty-coloured Solouque. Societies have been
formed in America to effect this object, even among
the planters of the South ; but it is a strange fact,
that the slaves show an intense dislike to the pro-
posed Exodus. The facts and arguments of " A
Cambridge Man" are addressed to the editor of the
Anti-Slavery Advocate, and the letter will be read
with profit both by the abolitionist and the pro-
slavery man.

The Church of England Quarterly Review.

London : Painter.

One of the first papers which many readers will
turn to, is a masterly production on elementary
education, in which Sir James Kay Shuttleworth is
eulogised as the main agent in effecting the great
revolution which began with the formation of the
Committee of Councilon Educati on in 1639. Sir
James is here defended vigorously from an attack
made upon his character as a Churchman and a
Christian by Mr. Archdeacon Denison, in a recent
charge to his clergy. The origin and progress of
the Church of England Education Society, the
Liverpool Auxiliary in connexion with which was
inaugurated a few weeks ago, is sketched by an
approving hand, familiar with the circumstances
which have led to the separation from the National
Society. The other articles in the present number
of this quarterly are—" Layard's Nineveh and
Babylon," "The Hohenstauffen and the Popes,"
" University Reform," " Allies' Primacy of St.
Peter," " The Mission of the Nations," "The
Reformation in England," and "The Jesuit as a
Missionary," besides the customary notices of
books, which, as usual, are genial, learned, and in-
structive.
Tht

Senator's Son : a Tale of Intemperance.
London : Clarke, Beeton, and Co.
An American lady, Metta Victoria Fuller, has
called in the aid of the now universal novel to sup-
port the Maine Liquor Law. Like all works of
fiction written for the express purpose of maintain-
ing a system, whether of politics or theology, "The
Senator's Son" is essentially a false production. It
possesses all the worst features of the least tem-
perate teetotal literature : burning bowels and deli-
rium tremens haunt every passage of the book—all
the noblest natures are represented as being defiled
and destroyed—every picture drawn by the artist
is black and revolting. Hence the work is horribly
monotonous and maudlin. The life delineated by
Miss Fuller is not the real life around her. Stump
orators in the teetotal interest have long ago worked
up her most striking exaggerations, so that her
sketches have not the merit either of being original
or fresh to the public.
In thus noticing " The Senator's Son," we deem
it proper to state that, from our experience in that
section of the Old World in which we live, we are
quite as well aware of the immense prevalence of
drunkenness as Miss Fuller can possibly be, and
quite as desirous, perhaps, to see the evil removed.
But we must emphatically dissent from the idea
that this object can be promoted in the smallest
measure by the publication of distorted pictures of
human life such as those perpetrated in " The
Senator's Son."
The Dublin University Magazine
Contains one especially noteworthy paper this
month, in the shape of a furious " pitch" into the
new poet, Alexander Smith, which is coupled with
a right pleasant and genial discourse on the life and
writings of poor Edgar Poe. The reviewer, in
criticising Mr. Smith, tells many wholesome truths,
by which, we are confident, a man possessing so
much sterling good sense as the young Scottish
bard will benefit. But we must enter our decided
protest against the tone of levity which pervades the
review. It is evident from the first line to the last
that the writer has been labouring hard to poke
fun at Mr. Smith ; and we are sorry that there is
even worse than the absence of a becoming serious-
ness in the paper. If space permitted, we might
attempt to prove that the alleged plagiarisms from
Longfellow Shelley, and others, are no plagiarisms
at all, and can only be classed with those extraor-
dinary literary coincidences which occur in the
works of the highest in the sky of song. And
when the reviewer mentions the introduction of
songs into the " Life-Drama," " which, without
the wit or melody, have a thousand times the
warmth and amativeness of those of Mr. Thomas
Little," he knows perfectly well that this is a great
exaggeration. The sneers at the " Herschel of the
Critic"—by whom, we presume, the Rev. George
Gilfillan is meant—are very ungenerous. We had
thought the "literary gentleman" of the Examiner
would not have found a companion in the mean and
contemptible course of prejudicing Mr. Smith and
his works because he happened to be first intro-
duced to public attention by Mr. Gilfillan. The
merits of the Dundee pastor, or of any London
periodical, have nothing to do with the character
of Mr. Smith's first book ; and, if it is to be re-
viewed, let it be disassociated from all outward
circumstances, and taken at its true value. How-