We do not mean to apply this to Miss Terry; but her volume reminded us, by the association of opposites, of the title to which we have referred.  We had long known her as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding in humor and pathos; but we had never conceived her as a writer of verse.  The readers of the “Atlantic” remember too well her “Maya, the Princess,” “Metempsychosis,” and “The Sphinx’s Children,” to need reminding that she has qualities of fancy as remarkable as her faculty for observing real life.  Miss Terry seems in this volume to have sought refuge from the real in the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being.  Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they are over-informed with thought and sadness.  By far the greater number of her themes are abstract and melancholy.  It appears to us that her mind moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts.  “Midnight” is a poem full of originality and vigor, with that suggestion of deepest meaning which is so much more effective than definite statement.  “December XXXI.” gives us a new and delightful treatment of a subject which the poets have made us rather shy of by their iteration.  We would signalize also, as an especial favorite of ours, “The Two Villages,” and still more the very striking poem “At Last.”  But, after all, we are not sure that the Ballads are not the best pieces in the volume.  The “Frontier Ballads,” in particular, quiver with strength and spirit, and have the true game-flavor of the border.

Harrington.  By the Author of “What Cheer?” Boston:  Thayer & Eldridge.

One of the most impossible books that man ever wrote.  A book which one could almost prove never could be written, and which, as an illogical conclusion, but a stubborn fact, has been written, nevertheless.  “Harrington” is an Abolition novel, the scene of which is laid in Boston, with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in Louisiana.  Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism.  Whenever the warm, pulse of an author’s heart can be felt through the texture of his story, criticism is mere flippancy.  But, at the risk of making our author’s lip curl with disdain of the sordid insensibility that refuses to join in his enthusiasm throughout, we shall venture to remind him that enthusiasm is no proof of truth, whether in argument or conclusion.