The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1874-04-13
5 and AUTHORIZATIONS America
Literature.

Literature.
There are only two genuine literary sensa-
tions-a new book by great author and
great book by new author. Very few books
have been published during the season which
come under either category. Forster, in COM
pleting his biography of Dickens, finished
work whose object was in itself sufficient to
make the work great. Victor Hugo, in his
'.Ninety-three, gave us one of those peculiar
pleasures he will never cease to give us while
he lives. But all of the great English and
American oracles have been silent. 'sThe
Parisians'' and 'sKenelm Chillingly'' belong
to the year that is past, and Bulwer to the past
altogether. We have had no really great
novel by q living hand since 'Middlemarch."
Tennyson is silent, and SO are Longfellow and
Lowell Carlyle has not given us book in q
long while, and we are not aware that
Emerson has anything new in the fur
mace of his brain. The fecund Whittier,
who gave us o new book almost every year
from 1856 to 1873, seems lettering in the
byways of literature. Darwin, Herbert Spen Ger
and Huxley are as quiet as if the doctrine
Of evolution could work out its own justifca-
ton. There is nothing new in poetry, phil
osophy or history, even the younger poets
Morris, Buchanan and Swinburne, Bret Harte,
John Hay and joaquin Miller-being content
to rest on the laurels already gathered The
great authors are doing nothing, or working
SO quietly that we hear little of them, and the
ranflv m far,r the
smile of criticism. Among our young men
Julian Hawthorne alone announces o new
book, and we trust to get something soon
again from Harriet Prescott ford pen. Miss
Norah Perry has a volume of her fugitive
poems in the press, and we may expect, when
of plaintve and wailing subtlety that no
other American woman has shown In his
torical writing new mine has been opened,
and before the season closes we shall have q
pretty free discussion of the last three or four
decades of the Republic. A life of Sumner,
two lives of Chase and a new life of Lincoln
are promised. Mr.. Gideon Welles has given
us much secret history of MIR. Lin
coin administration in his recent volume on
Lincoln and Seward" and Mr. Nathan Sar-
gent is doing an almost similar service for the
administration of the late President Fillmore.
These numerous volumes must compel COM
pleter study OF our recent history and Of
the men who figured in politics before and
during the rebellion. ALI this we may expect
will lead in the end to history of the transit
ton period in republican America as vivid as
that with which Macaulay surprised the last
generation by his history of the transition
period in English monarchy. The tendency
of the next ten years in American literature
will be toward biographical and historical
writing, and it will scarcely be until after we
thoroughly understand our history and our
selves especially the changes introduced into
our civilization by the new agencies of the
railroad, the telegraph and the power press
that the coming American novelist will ap-
pear just now we are too much amazed at
the changes wrought in the recent historical
period fully to understand them, and even our
literature will have to wait upon our studies of
ourselves and our surroundings.
The RELIGIOUS CosFERESoEs In Now
York and our sister city, Brooklyn, our Meth
odist friends are sitting in solemn conference.
The meeting to-day, it is expected, will be
more than usually interesting. Brother
Ferris, IT is understood, will be heard in the
matter of the accumulation ticket" The
Doctor does not deny that he did something
which was very wrong. 1t will be well if he
is able to explain the affair in manner salts
factory to the Conference and the public gen.