John Brent.  By THEODORE WINTHROP, Author of “Cecil Dreeme.”  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

It is probable that we have not yet completely appreciated the value of the bright and noble life which a wretched Rebel sharp-shooter extinguished in the disastrous fight of Great Bethel.  “John Brent” is a book which gives us important aid in the attempt to form an adequate conception of Winthrop’s character.  Its vivid pages shine throughout with the author’s brave and tender spirit.  “Cecil Dreeme” was an embodiment of his thoughts, observations, and imaginations; “John Brent” shows us the inbred poetry and romance of the man in the grander form of action.  The scene is placed in the wild Western plains of America, among men entirely free from the restraints of conventional life; and the book has a buoyancy and brisk vitality, a dashing, daring, and jubilant vigor, such as we are not accustomed to in ordinary romances of American life.  Sir Philip Sidney is the type of the Anglo-Saxon hero; but we think that Winthrop was fully his match in delicacy and intrepidity, in manly courage, and in sweet, instinctive tenderness.  As to style, the American far exceeds the Englishman.  A certain conventional artifice and dainty affectation clouded the clear and beautiful nature of Sidney, when he wrote.  The elaborate embroidery of thought, the stiff and cumbrous Elizabethan dress of language, with all its ruffles and laces, make the “Arcadia” an imperfect exponent of Sidney’s nature.  His intense thoughts, delicate emotions, and burning passions are half concealed in the form he adopts for their expression.  But Winthrop is as fresh, natural, strong, and direct in his language as in his life.  He used words, not for ornament, but for expression.  Every phrase is stamped by a die supplied by reflection or feeling, and not a paragraph in “John Brent” differs in spirit from the practical heroism which urged the author to expose himself to certain death at Great Bethel.  The condensed, lucid, picturesque, and sharp-cut sentences, flooded with will, show the nature of the man,—­a man who announced no sentiments and principles he was not willing to sacrifice himself to disseminate or defend.  A living energy of soul glows over the whole book,—­swift, fiery, brave, wholesome, sincere, impatient of all physical obstacles to the operation of thought and affection, and eager to make stubborn facts yield to the impatient pressure of spiritual purpose.

We cannot say much in praise of the plot of “John Brent,” but it at least enables the author to supply a good framework for his incidents, descriptions, and characters.  The plot is based rather on possibilities than probabilities; but the men and women he depicts are thoroughly natural.  It would be difficult to point to any other American novel which furnishes incidents that can compare in vigor and vividness with some of the incidents in this romance.  The ride to rescue Helen Clitheroe from her kidnappers