FRESH GLEANINGS OR A NEW SHEAF FROM THE OLD FIELDS OF CONTINENTAL EUROPE. By IK. MARVEL. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THE HARPERS, who have so long been famous for the multitude of their issues, seem recently to have determined upon surpassing all competitors in the beauty of their execution. This pleasant gossiping book, with its rubricated title, smooth white paper, and large and elegant type, is equal, as a specimen of book-manufacture, to any thing we have seen from Paris or London; and it deserves this dress, for it has the freshness that is claimed for it; while its dashes of humor, the fidelity of its draw. ings, and the evident sincerity which pervade it, make it among the most lively productions of its class. The sketches of the restaurants at Paris, the beggar-boys in Hungary, the inns of Lyons, the author's travelling companions, etc., are in an exceedingly clever vein. We make but one or two extracts. The following passage affords a graphic picture of a Parisian grisette:

'You will find her in every shop of Paris, (except those of the exchange brokers, where are fat, middle-aged ladies, who would adorn the circles of Wall-street;) there she stands, with her hair laid smooth as her cheek, over her forehead; in the prettiest blue muslin dress you can possibly imagine; a bit of narrow white lace running round the neck, and each little hand set off with the same and a very witch at a bargain. He who makes the shop-girl of Paris bate one jot of price, must needs have French at his tongue's end.

'There may be two at a time, there may be six; she is nothing abashed. She has the same plea sant smile; the same gentle courtesy for each, and her eye glances like thought from one to the other. You may laugh-she will laugh back; you may chat-she will chat back; you may scoldshe will scold back. She guesses your wants: there they are, the prettiest gloves, she says, in Paris. You cannot utter half a sentence, but she understands the whole; you cannot pronounce so badly, but she has your meaning in a moment. She takes down package upon package; she measures your hand- her light fingers running over yours: Quelle jolie petite main" She assists in putting a pair fairly on: And how many pair does Monsieur wish?'

"But one!-ah! Monsieur is surely joking! See what pretty colors!' and she gathers a cluster in her fingers; and so nice a fit!' and she takes hold of the glove upon your hand.

Only two! ah! it is indeed too few, and so cheap! Only fifteen francs for the six pair-which is so little for Monsieur !' and she rolls them in a paper, looking you all the time fixedly in the eye. And there is no refusal; and you slip the three pieces of money upon the counter, and she drops them into the little drawer, and thanks you in a way that makes you think, as you go out, that you have been paying for the smiles, and nothing for the gloves.

'One wears out a great many gloves at Paris!'

The second extract, and all for which we have space, will give the reader some idea of the manner in which the municipal machinery of the great world of Paris is carried on:

'You see a stone out of its place in the pavement; and a day does not pass, but a parcel of quiet workers, without any visible director, with pick-axes and shovels, restore the order. You see a man run down by one of the groaning omnibusses; and appearing on the instant, you know not whence, are five or six men in military dress, who bear him carefully away for surgical treatment; and if no friends claim him, in two hours time, he is carried to one of those great hospitals, where he has one of those beds, and a share of that attendance which is daily bestowed upon seventeen

thousand sick and homeless souls. You hear a disturbance, a slight quarrel in a thoroughfare; a few on-lookers collecting; and before you have noticed his approach, a man in military cap and with light sword is among them, and takes one of the brawlers by the arm; he waves his hand to the crowd, and it disperses. How is it that one feels so secure against every annoyance in the city he has thought of as the city of wickedness? You are going to the opera: your carriage is stopped two squares from the opera-house by a horseman in a glittering helmet, with black plumes waving over it; he directs with his drawn sword the way the coachman is to take; the order has been arranged and prescribed at the Prefecture of Police. Arrived at the door of the theatre, three or more of the mounted guard, upon their black horses, direct order upon driving away; it may snow, or it may rain; it may be early or late; still the stern-looking horsemen are there; their helmets and swords glittering in the gas-light. You alight from your carriage, and a couple of the sergeantsde-ville are loitering carelessly upon the steps; they run their eyes half-inquiringly over you as you enter. Each side the little ticket box is stationed a soldier with musket; two of the municipal guard. You enter a passage sentinelled by another; and within are three or four loitering at the door-ways.

'Perhaps there is a slight disturbance; some brawler is in the house. In that event, the soldier at the door disappears a moment; he comes again with four or five of his comrades; there is no need of excuses or promises now; the brawler goes out, over benches and boxes. He,is handed over to the sergeant-de-ville. The sergeant-de-ville calls a carriage, and the brawler rides to the Palais de Justice.

Perhaps the disturbance is more general. The soldiers try to arrest it; they press some down, they motion the others; but perhaps half the company are hissing and shouting so that the play cannot go on. In this event- and it occurred during my last visit to Paris-a plain-looking gentleman, dressed simply in black, with a bit of ribbon in one button-hole, leans over from one of the boxes and tells the audience, in a quiet way, 'if the noise does not cease he shall order the theatre to be cleared.'

There is no use in expostulation, still less in resistance; for the man in black, whom nobody knew till now, is a commissary of police, and in twenty minutes could order a thousand men upon the spot. The house was quiet in a moment, and the play went on.'

Perhaps the time may come, under some city administration or other, when our own metropolis will be equally well guarded: that 'end' however, so devoutly to be hoped for, is not yet;' although its advent is promised toward the commencement of every municipal election, by those worthy office-seekers who would avoid doing any thing that may look disgracious i' the city's eye' at such a time.

THE HISTORY OF THE GIRONDISTS: OR PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF THE PATRIOTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, FROM UNPUBLISHED SOURCES. By ALPHONSE LA MARTINE. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

LA MARTINE, the greatest of the living poets of the Continent; celebrated also as a traveller, an orator, and a statesman; whose recollections go back to the 'days of terror,' and to whom the most familiar traditions are those of the Revolution and the Empire; is on all accounts a fit historian of the Girondists. His genius, his position, his integrity, and the period of time and the point of view from which he writes, give a great and peculiar value and interest to this work of his upon the most remarkable portion of modern history. Even CARLYLE has not more graphic power; and his style, in the original and in the translation, is classically pure. The distinguishing excellence of this history is in its dramatic arrangement, its effective grouping and perfect unity. It consists of scenes and sketches, distinct as the billows, but one as the sea.' Nothing can be finer than some of the individual portraits, as specimens of literary art, and many of them will surprise the reader by their originality: they have hardly a line in agreement with previous limnings of the same subjects. Take the case of ROBESPIERRE on the canvass of LA MARTINE he is by no means the native demon of the common histories, but a great angel ruined, nor yet even quite abraded of his glory. No history, romance, or poem, has for a long time appeared, that possesses more attractions, or that will have a wider popularity. In France, in a few months, twenty thousand copies of it have been sold. Of the elegant edition which the HARPERS have given us, probably as great a number will be demanded; at all events, it would be creditable to our citizens if such should prove to be the fact.

THE NORTH-AMERICAN REVIEW. Number CXXXVI. pp. 262. Boston: OTIS, BROADERS AND COMPANY. New-York; C. S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY.

AMONG the numerous publications which accumulated upon our table during our late absence, few of which we have gained leisure even yet to read with attention, we found the North-American Review' for the July quarter. Its typographical appear

ance is even more than usually chaste and neat; while its papers seem to possess something more than their wonted variety, in theme and mode of treatment. The articles are upon GAYARRE'S History of Louisiana,' Early History of the English Language,' Egypt and England,'' BALZAC's Novels,' ELLIS's Life of WILLIAM PENN,' SABINE's Sketches of the Loyalists,' 'CAMPBELL's Lives of the Chancellors,' 'D'ISRAELI's Tancred,' (a most spirited, well-reasoned, sententious paper,) Mrs. BUTLER'S 'Year of Consolation,' 'The KNICKERBOCKER on FELTON'S Agamemnon,'' and the usual briefer Critical Notices.' Touching the last article proper, we must permit the youth fresh from college,' who has so excited the ire of the NorthAmerican' Reviewer, to return 'measure for measure' to his Athenian antagonist. In doing so, however, we must be permitted to say, that in our judgment the controversy has on both sides assumed an asperity which is much to be regretted. So far as this Magazine is concerned, the discussion of this classical question must end with the present number, to which so many of its pages are devoted, to the exclusion of much and various matériel, of far more interest, we cannot help thinking, to the general reader:

THE NORTH-AMERICAN REVIEW AND OUR CRITIQUE ON FELTON.

To assail an abuse of any standing, or expose a humbug of any prevalence, is always a task of more or less peril. The iconoclast is seldom a welcome apparition, though often a very necessary one; and if he does not provoke the genuine lightnings of ZEUS, he must at least make up his mind to encounter the mimic thunders of SALMONEUS. No imposture is so weak that it cannot make a noise in its defence when attacked; and, in most cases, the weaker the imposture, the louder the clamor; for the imposition is built up originally out of wind and vapor, which cost very little, but are its indispensable supports. The man who undertakes to clean out a long-disused chimney will probably bring down much rubbish about his ears, and possibly some vermin, but the chimney must be swept, notwithstanding.

When, therefore, in the exercise of our critical capacity, we were called on to pass judgment upon that very pretentious and inadequate book, FELTON'S AGAMEMNON, we did not for a moment suppose that our searching and deliberate exposé of that precious production would be suffered to pass without exciting much vehement indignation and sputtering outery. Accordingly, the North American Review, which has the fatuity to suppose itself the organ of a great school, and actually talks as if it were a periodical of talent and reputation, like the Edinburgh or Blackwood, or even our own humble Magazine, has fulminated a most virulent article against us. There can be no doubt that the writer is in downright earnest. His attack is intended to be overwhelming; and it is through no want of inclination on his part that we fail to be, not merely excoriated, but utterly obliterated and annihilated by the severity of his onset. Fortunately for ourselves, the woodenness of his arms and the inefficiency of his aim have converted what was meant for a formidable assault into a lu dicrous exhibition of impotent antics; much as if 'SAIREY GAMP,' after an over-dose of tea, should essay to run a muck with her umbrella.

The reviewer begins with a dignity too briefly sustained to be very imposing, by affirming that he has not the slightest intention of entering into any debate with the KNICKERBOCKER upon abstruse points of philology, or upon the merits of an edition of a Greek classic. Our present object is only to expose the character of an article so remarkable for its violation of the laws not only of politeness, but of decency, for its unprovoked personalities and gross invasion of the sanctity of private life, that the writer of it deserves public rebuke and disgrace. He shall have the notoriety which he seems to covet, so far as the circulation and influence of this Review can give it to him.'

Here he gives up the battle in the outset, and leaves himself nothing but a cowardly system of guerilla. For what is this opening announcement but saying: "The KNICKERBOCKER is too strong for us in Greek; there he has us. One of our pet idols is irretrievably smashed. DAGON is down, and we can't get him on his legs again. But wo be to the iconoclast who has made this public mock of our false gods! Won't we give it to him if we can catch him!' Accordingly, our assailant's next move is to designate an individual New Yorker, whom he introduces prominently by name, as the author of our critique; and, this done, proceeds to pelt him with the longest and hardest words he can find. Now there is no doubt that, as a general rule, sonorous epithets have a very fine effect. The excited town-bellman, in one of BLACKWOOD's stories, calls his opponent 'a dephlogisticated parabola,' and makes a great sensation by it; but as the point at issue was the merits and demerits of Mr. FELTON, as an editor of ÆSCHYLUS, not the birth, parentage, and education of the individual denounced by the reviewer, or of any other individual in New York or elsewhere, all the particulars of Mr.'s private history, however valuable they may be to that gentleman's future biographer, are in the present instance remarkably irrelevant and decidedly ovdèv mpòs Alovicov. As to the quondam Scholar of Trinity, assumed to be our classical critic, his standing on both sides the Atlantic is such as to render him, and his, felicitously indifferent with respect to whatever the 'North American' may choose to say of him, either in its ordinary routine of placid and prosy panegyric, or its occasional exuberance of absurd invective. One remark, however, we must make en passant. To call names requires no stupendous effort of genius. Any 'loafer,' or 'snob,' or gamin can do it; indeed, people of that sort are usually cleverer at it than gentlemen are.

Our reviewer's next demonstration is a piece of cool hypocrisy, for which our readers will hardly be prepared. He pretends (credite posteri!) to defend New-York scholarship, and to vindicate it from our slights! This idea of a man's attacking himself and being defended against himself is too ludicrous for any but a transcendentalist to contemplate with gravity. And on what is the exquisitely absurd pretension grounded? Favete linguis! Fellow-New-Yorkers! hear this chivalrous champion in your defence:

'DOES he suppose that his fellow-citizens generally will be gratified, when a youth fresh from college from an English college-assures them, with a very lordly and patronizing air, that 'New-York scholarship is really very respectable as far as it goes, and not altogether contemned on the other side of the water? Really, who will say, after this, that PUNCH's illustrations of 'the Rising Generation' are only caricatures?'

Now if we had written the above-quoted clauses in all soberness, we should be at no loss for a plausible defence of them. We might say that we spoke of New-York scholarship in no terms of extravagant eulogy, because it is not our custom to puff ourselves, as it is the custom of the Boston clique to puff themselves, in season and out of season; because we prefer that others should blow our trumpet for us, or if none can be found to do so, that it should be left unblown; because, if we were silly enough to act differently, our fellow-classics here would not be silly enough to thank us for it; because, for instance, if we had impliedly called ANTHON a greater scholar than PORSON and HERMANN put together, or openly said of DRISLER that he had cleared up all the dif ficulties of his authors, we should not raise ourselves in the estimation of either of those gentlemen by toadyism so open and disgusting, but, on the contrary, incur their just contempt. But we have no need or wish to put an ex-post-facto construction on our expressions. What we wrote stood originally thus:

AND not only do they claim to be the classics of the Continent, but the only classics; affecting to despise New-York scholarship, which is really very respectable as far as it goes, and not altogether contemned on the other side of the water, Professor Anthon's books being extensively read and republished in England and Scotland.'

The restoration of the now Italicized clause will leave our readers in little doubt as to the meaning of our sentence. It was written in pure irony; and now this stupid Bostonian takes it for downright earnest! After this, we are less surprised to find the writer, in the next place, gravely and ferociously attacking a good humoured pleasantry of ours, as if it were a deliberate piece of scandal, or slander, or Heaven knows what. We are very sorry that our joke was misconstrued, or supposed to be any thing more than a joke; and if the fellow who has been employed to do FELTON's dirty work in the North American' had made the most distant approach to decency or honesty in any one of his sixteen pages, we should have been too happy to make any explanation or apology that he or Mr. FELTON, or any one else, could have wished.

By this time the tea has begun to work, and the old lady pours out on our devoted head a whole slang-dictionary full of hard names. So far as we can digest her somewhat incoherent charges, VOL. XXX. 34

they resolve themselves into the two of dogmatism' and 'flippancy.' What sense our venerable antagonist attaches to the word 'dogmatism' we are not perfectly certain; for, so fond is she of using ornamental epithets, like Mr. PECKSNIFF, without the least regard to their meaning, that it is not very easy to find out what she does intend to say. But supposing the word to be taken in its usual sense, and to mean laying down ex-cathedra opinions of our own without due regard to those of others, we indignantly repudiate it. We profess to be a very humble follower of the modern English school, as it is represented by LIDDELL and LINWOOD, DONALDSON and PALEY, WORDSWORTH and the KENNEDYS; men of whom the Boston reviewer, in his limited reading, seems never to have heard, and whose very names he fears to mention, but whom we have a perfect right to prefer to a fifteenth-rate German commentator like SCHNEIDER. In the whole course of our remarks we made but three original suggestions; one of which we avowedly threw out as a random shot for what it was worth; a second no one has yet objected to; and for the third, if it should turn out to have received the sanction and adoption of a distinguished professor at the London University, our sneering friend may possibly be induced to change his opinion of it. We have been sedulous in giving chapter and verse for our assertions. In some cases we illustrated them by parallel passages; in others we fortified them by the dicta of other critics; in many we did both. But there certainly were instances where we gave our opinion without adding reference or reason, because, as we suppose our readers to understand something of Greek (whatever may be the case with our reviewers), we sometimes thought it sufficient merely to point out an obvious blunder. Thus, v. 1350, where FELTON, in the teeth of all previous commentators, translates λiños apénci' a clot of blood becomes thee,' we thought it enough to say that they were quite right and he was quite wrong,' without going on to add, as we might have done, that when pέ has the sense of decet it is either impersonal (which is the more frequent construction), or else has the dative of the object expressed. Thus we might express Discretion is befitting by σωφρονεῖν πρέπει οι θνητοῖς σωφροσύνη πρέπει, but not by owôposúvηn pénε merely. So, too, we did not think it necessary to prove by examples that TUYxávo has a habit of governing the genitive, or to show by a long dissertation that the Fates and Furies were different personages and worshipped with different rites. And common sense teaches us that no man can be expected to give in detail all the steps of the process by which he has arrived at a conclusion upon a disputed passage.

If we had begun our note on 1244-7 after this fashion: An inaccuracy in those distinguished commentators, KLAUSEN and PEILE (from whom it gives us great pain to be obliged to differ), was here first pointed out to us by L.L.D., Regius Professor of, in the University of

whose pupil we were in the year 183, and his opinion was confirmed by the Rev. whom we met at, in the spring of the following year;' or constructed all our comments on this general scheme: 'Of the sixteen editors of ESCHYLUS we possess fifteen, not having been able to procure the work of Prof. Oelenschlager, of Drontheim. Four of these are silent on the pas sage; eight say this, three that, and SCHNEIDER the other. But the value of SCHNEIDER's rendering is diminished by the fact, etc., etc.; and of the two parallel passages adduced by - one may be referred to a misprint in his edition of, so that, on the whole, we are justified in assuming, etc., etc.' If, we repeat, we had begun our note after this fashion, it is evident to the capacity of the meanest Bostonian that classical criticism would become an interminable work for both writer and reader.

The charge of 'flippancy' may refer to the general tone of our article, or to our way of speaking of other editors, or to our treatment of the Boston mis-editor. That the tone of our article was light, we admit. It was intentionally so, because classics are such a drug in the American market (owing to the popular ignorance of them, which ignorance our instructors, the New-Englanders, have done their best to foster), that a classical article must be made spicy to be read at all. Our treatment of preceding commentators deserves more particular examination. We said of KLAUSEN that, though an ingenious editor, he was unsafe to depend upon, because given to ex-cathedra dogmatisms. And of these dogmatisms we gave instances. Somebody, whom we have read very lately, says that, in the case of ÆSCHYLUS, 'dogmatism is so singularly out of place that any editor who manifests it may be pronounced at once to be unfitted for his undertaking.' Has the Boston reviewer any idea of who that somebody may be?

We spoke of MITCHELL as habitually inaccurate. FELTON AND COMPANY seem to have utterly misunderstood the theory of MITCHELL, if we may be allowed the expression. He was a most valuable man in his way. He entered into the spirit of ARISTOPHANES more fully than any commentator has ever done. He cleared away many false views which had been entertained respecting his character. He translated him into magnificent English verse. He illustrated him copiously from ATHENAEUS and other sources. For all this we, as the humblest of the admirers of that glo