bread to give her children-she drives bargains with editors-is familiarized with stale tobacco smoke-Hyacynth grows jealous; she receives complimentary letters from John Stokes, and endearing communications from Mary R Her children spend

their first miserable endless day at school, the editor of the Household Messenger pronounces her a genius, she writes four pieces a week for the Standard and Pilgrim-ah, could he secure her and have those four condensed into one for the Household Messenger! He writes respectfully, she replies sisterly; he answers, offering triple pay; she rejoins at once, accepting it. Her discarded publishers are indignant; a long correspondence ensued. Mr. Walter is put off; letters multiply from all quarters, from north and south, east and west; her autograph is repeatedly solicited; her hand and heart are more than once fervently sought. The longest chapter in the book is a phrenological examination of her head for the benefit of Mr. Walter. But the butterfly-life of the " newspaperial" contributor was not enough for the soul of inspired mediocrity. She must write a book. The book is written and published, it sells freely, her fame and fortune are made, widowers sigh for her hand, gentlemen of fortune request her to sit for her bust to be grouped with those of the Hemans and the Landon. The production and triumph of "Life and Sketches" is the grand climax to which "Ruth Hall" had been tending. And that grand fact happily performed, the volume expires, giving birth to the inner book. Hyacinth is proud of his sister, her parents are astounded into love, and the heroine departs, wearing by way of a flag, a printed certificate of a hundred one hundred dollar shares in the Seton Bank.

We think we have fairly and conscientiously presented an outline of this celebrated work. We would imagine that it required the touch of genius to spread such meagre incident over a surface of four hundred pages, in a way to captivate a rational being's attention from first to last. Such a fact would appear to require burning eloquence, artistic finish, dramatic power, pungent wit, and resistless humor, all of the highest order. A bright intellect, proud in its conscious power, would glance contemptuously at "Ruth Hall,” and promise to dash off twenty such barren trifles

a year. But, oh! the pity of it. Genius could never produce such a book from now till dooms-day. Genius could never keep the heroine so remorselessly within reach of every damsel whose first literary dreams are dawning. Genius could never conjecture what mighty charm lurked for the million poetesses of the land, in those tributary letters from Billy Sands, and Thomas Pearce, and Kitty. Genius could never have forgotton and lost sight of the woman Ruth in the authoress Floy, and parted from her with that triumphal wave of the Seton Bank stock banner, an exit more impressive than Fanny Kemble's from Niagara. For all these things, the miracle of inspired mediocrity was needed. Genius never could have invented those short and deliciously small chapters, deposited as careful mothers deposit a tea-spoon-full of preserves in a bounteous margin of white plate; genius could never frame those delicate chapters, so exquisitely with choice sentiments, fringing the dialogue like a border of flowers! Genius could never point those same pet chapters with initial or final exclamations, recorded in isolated and independent beauty such as "Ruth liked it!-Ruth sleeps!— Fate folded her hands! Hark to the Sabbath bell! Oh vanity, thy name is William Sterns!"

The miraculous power already mentioned, was alone equal to this. Genius, with all its daring, would never have ventured to lasso in characters hap-hazard from the herd, at such a fearful rate; and great as is its power of taking up and dropping its creations at pleasure, it will not part with them until it has given them a sure but brief impress of its fiery seal! Genius could not pos bly make so much and get so little of the wet nurse, of the predictions of the step-mother respecting the probable loss of Ruth's hair; of the critiques on Harry's summer-house and parlors, fragrant with wild flowers; of the parental persecution of Pat, the Irish gardener; of the counting-room of Tom Develin; of the intended, but postponed visit of the two fashionable ladies to Ruth's poor boarding house; of the compulsory parting with Harry's old clothes; of the proposition to buy Harry's coral pin; of the CaliJornia flight of Mr. Skiddy; and, last of all, so much and so little of brother John Walter and sister "Ruth Hall." Genius would eternally be either above or below the mark-dodging round and

round, hovering about, high and low-but never exactly right. Genius may fume at the golden success of "Ruth Hall" and fancy that it could go and do likewise; but, never, never, though its heart broke in the effort. Never, even though urged on by the trim spurs of starvation and inspiration will it be able to accomplish such a work. There would be rough ugly diamonds instead of that glittering string of inflamed paste. "Fanny Fern" has not lowered her flight one inch to gain her hearers-she has flown at the top of her bent, to just the very elevation required-neither high nor low-but even on-straight ahead. Nancy is never once puzzled, William never once drawn out of himself. The small intelligences have it all their own way from preface to exit. How much of auto-biography may be found in the work, we know not, inasmuch as we have no inkling of who is meant by the vegetable pseudonym of "Fanny Fern." But there must be much self-infusion in the book, or even inspired mediocrity could not have so completely forgotton and merged the woman Ruth in the authoress Floy. From the commencement of her literary career to the publication of "Life and Sketches," Ruth Hall ceases to be an interesting woman. To be sure, she had done or said nothing particularly great or astonishing before, but from that moment the sympathy excited by her sorrows ceases and is expected to give place to admiration of her success. Ruth does absolutely nothing but write. Letters from publishers, and lovers, and admirers compose the last third of the book. She is nothing but a woman who has perpetrated a book; as if that astonishing merit, like the birth of a child, was the crowning feat of her existence-a final catastrophe, a wondrous development. We, therefore, imagine that Fanny Fern having embarked so faithfully in auto-biography, refrained from self-praise and extollation, although she has continued to give an equivalent for her own silence, in the phrenological examination and in the adulatory epistles so freely introduced.

Ruth Hall has, also, dodged the whole critical and reviewing world, and gone, right straight, to the homes and hearts of the small intelligences without the aid of endorsers. It was placarded, in the daily papers, as the miracle of the age, as, indeed, it is, and distributed by a thousand carriers, wherever Yankee in

genuity or Yankee tact could penetrate. The gigantic porters keeping watch and ward at the castle gates against all comers of ordinary size, found this little fliberty-gibbet skipping in between their colossal legs. Fanny Fern became famous in a day. Her Life and Beauties are already given to a gaping world, and all the newspaperial essays, the first effusions, the dead letters, will probably have a speedy resurrection. All this is well enough once it is something to have the existence and possibility of inspired mediocrity fully and conclusively established; but in the name of Horace, let it not go on whispering, and posturing, and whining forever, until genuine inspiration, true genius and power are mute. Let mediocrity content itself, with once having made a pleasant story, without plot or incident, with having made attractive the conversations between mothers and children, and enemies and patrons, such as you cannot escape in a morning's business and an evening visit, with having made a heroine of a good, pious, single-minded widow, by marrying her to literature, and making her the mother of a book. We are heart-sick of the crude, hasty, undigested things that pretend to the unity and completeness of books; we are intellectually insulted almost every time we dare to open a work of fiction. It seems to be a hopeless task for any mortal man or woman to wade through the putrid sea of imbecility, now flooding us with books, as numerous and small as shoals of minnows, and emerge with any thing like a respectable prize in hands. It seems impossible, even to obtain a hearing amidst the hum of small voices-this buzz of the bee hive. But let genius once more sing at heaven's high gate, and the sweet notes will reach us even through the uproar; let its clarion be pure gold, and its voice clear as the ice-brook of the Samosierra, and it will not speak in vain. There is yet no farewell to literature, the last of the lingering arts, as Hope was the last of the Gods; there is yet amongst the nations, an audience of taste, more appreciative, more rewarding, than even the massed enthusiasts of inspired mediocrity; the audience that now harkens to Thackeray and still clings to Dickens; the audience that thrilled to Jane Eyre, and melted at Ruth, and brooded over the "Scarlet Letter;" the audience that turn abashed and insulted from the presumptuous littleness of "Ruth Hall."

ART. VII.-AMERICAN EDUCATION: Its Principles and EleDedicated to the Teachers of the United States. By EDWARD D. MANSFIELD. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.

Of all the questions that have been agitated at the present day, few have attracted more attention than those connected with the important subject of education, and, by a remarkable, but not uncommon fatality, no topic of debate has been more disfigured and obscured by blunders of the gravest character. The mistakes alluded to are not confined to mere matters of detail, though here they are sufficiently numerous and mischievous. The fundamental ideas of education entertained by the majority of our people are essentially and absolutely erroneous. If we divest these notions of their surroundings, their rhetorical and poetical disguises, and show them in their unadorned character, we shall see how quickly their falsity will be detected, without the aid of any very profound investigation or elaborate argument.

One of the most prominent of these errors is, as we conceive, the unreasonable confidence reposed in the efficacy of education, and the unbounded advantages expected from it. Pope's couplet :

""Tis education forms the common mind,

Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined,"

so often quoted, that it is familiar to those who cannot claim acquaintance with any other portion of English literature, has been expanded, of late, to a breadth of meaning, which that poet's sound, and somewhat cynical good sense, could never have intended or foreseen. Pope, certainly, as the context will prove, meant nothing more than that the external circumstances to which men were subjected, exerted a modifying influence over their tastes, habits, and pursuits. But this is, by no means, the sense in which the phrase is ordinarily quoted. Open any book, read any editorial, listen to almost any harangue, on the subject we are discussing, and the truth of this assertion will stare us in the face.