and it is, perhaps, only by making it once for themselves that they can learn to sift.  It is so hard at first, when all the sand seems golden!  Of old the Muses were three, each of whom must reject something from the poem, but when verse-writing became easier and more traditional, their number was raised to nine, that they might be the harder to please.  And what a difficult jury they are! and how long they stay out over their verdict!

But, after all, it seems to us that Mr. Hayne has the root of the matter in him; and we shall look to meet him again, bringing a thinner, yet a fuller book.  The present volume shows thoughtfulness, culture, sensibility to natural beauty, and great refinement of feeling.  We like the first poem, which is also the longest, best of all.  The subject is an imaginative one,—­and the choice of a subject is one great test of genuine aptitude and ability.  In this poem, and in some of the sonnets, (which are good both in matter and construction,) Mr. Hayne shows a genuine vigor of expression and maturity of purpose.  There is a tone of sadness in the volume, as if the author were surrounded by an atmosphere uncongenial to letters.  The reader cannot fail to be struck with this, and also with the oddity of two or three political sonnets, in which Mr. Hayne calls on his fellow-citizens to rally for the defence of slavery in the name of freedom.  The book is dedicated, in a very graceful and cordial sonnet, to Mr. E.P.  Whipple; and it is seldom that South Carolina sends so pleasant a message to Massachusetts.  Mr. Hayne need only persevere in self-culture to be able to produce poems that shall win for him a national reputation.

Fairy Dreams; or Wanderings in Elfland. By JANE G. AUSTIN.  With Illustrations by Hammatt Billings.  Boston:  J.E.  Tilton & Co. 1859.

This is a pretty book for children, written with no little feeling and fancy, and in a graceful style.  The chimney-corner has been abolished by the economical furnace-register, and Santa Claus, if he come at all, must do it like an imp of the pit.  The volumes for children to pore over, as they bake by the stove, or stew over the black hole in the floor, have also suffered an economic and practical change.  No more fires, no more pretty fancies, seems to have been the doom.  Parents who think, as we do, that children inhale practicality with our American atmosphere, and that a little encouragement of the imaginative side of their nature is not amiss, will be glad to drop Mrs. Austin’s book into the proper stocking.  The stories are well told; that, especially, of the Gray Cat is full of fanciful invention.  The book is very prettily manufactured also, though we think publishers are carrying their fondness for tinted paper too far.  Salmon-color is too much; the deepest tint allowable is that of cream from a cow that has grazed among buttercups.

Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India: Being Extracts from the Letters of the late Major W.S.R.  HODSON, B.A., Trinity College, Cambridge; First Bengal European Fusileers, Commandant of Hodson’s Horse.  Including a Personal Narrative of the Siege of Delhi and Capture of the King and Princes.  Edited by his Brother, the Rev. GEORGE H. HODSON, M.A., Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.  From the Third and Enlarged English Edition.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 1860. 16mo. pp. 444.