Among the miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy, in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety of versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred.  We have found the great majority of them exceedingly exhilarating reading, and, if our limits admitted an extended examination, we feel sure that the result of the analysis would be the eliciting of unexpected merits rather than the detection of hidden defects.

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Say and Seal.  By the Author of “Wide, Wide World,” and the Author of “Dollars and Cents.”  In Two Volumes.  Philadelphia:  J.B.  Lippincott & Co.

Another story from “Elizabeth Wetherell” is a welcome addition to our scanty stock of American, novels.  Our real American novels may be counted on our fingers, while the tales that claim the name may be weighed by the ton.  At the present time, we count Hawthorne among our novelists, and Mrs. Stowe, and perhaps Curtis, since his “Trumps”; but as for our thousand and one unrivalled authors, “whose matchless knowledge of the human heart and wonderful powers of delineation place them far above Dickens or Thackeray,” they are all, from Sylvanus Cobb, Junior, down to Ned Buntline and Gilmore Simms, beneath serious notice, and may be left to the easy verdict of the readers of the cheap magazines and illustrated newspapers, in whose columns they have gained a world-wide obscurity.  Miss Warner’s books have always a genuine flavor of originality, and an acute, living appreciation of Yankee character, that give them a right to rank, unchallenged, as real and valuable novels.  In their simplicity, their freshness, their quiet humor and not less quiet fun, their frequent narrowness and stiffness, and their deep and true religious sentiment, they have the real essence of the New England character.

In every novel there are three principal elements,—­the Hero, the Heroine, the Villain,—­all three gracefully blending, in the Plot.  We cannot especially congratulate our authors upon their Hero.  In a favorite farce, the slightly bewildered Mr. Lullaby observes musingly, “Brown?  Brown?  That name sounds familiar!  I must have heard that name before!  I’ll swear I’ve heard that name before!” We have a dim consciousness of having met “Mr. Linden” before, albeit under a different name.  A certain Mr. Humphreys, whom we remember of old, strongly resembles him:  so does one Mr. Guy Carleton.  We were very well pleased with our old friend Humphreys, (or Carleton,) and would by no means hint at any reluctance to meet him again; but a new novel, by its very announcement, implies a new hero,—­and if we come upon a plain family-party, when fondly hoping for an introduction to some distinguished stranger, we may be excused for thinking ourselves hardly treated.  Is it so infallible a sign of superiority, moreover, to speak constantly in riddles?  This Sphinx-like