Mr. Bryant’s oration is the ideal of what such an oration should be, a model of appreciative criticism--fine style, and just laudation of high qualities, and worthy contribution to the land’s literature. We rejoice to learn that Messrs. Stringer & Townsend propose shortly to bring out a splendid complete edition of his works, finely illustrated by Darley, like Putnam’s edition of Irving, and prophecy equal success to their enterprise. * * * * * _The Master Builder: or a Life at a Trade. By Day Kellog Lee. Author of “Summerfield, or Life on a Farm.” Redfield, Clinton Hall, New York._ This is a simple, domestic tale, founded on the difficulties, the struggles, and the ultimate success of a poor foundling boy, thrown in his infancy among strangers, and fighting his way, through the great battle-field of life, in spite of all difficulties, by dint of genius, backed by industry, perseverance, energy, honesty, and faith, to happiness, fame, and fortune. The subject is well conceived, the plot well planned, the characters, in the main, well drawn, though in some sort exaggerated, and the tale, as regards matter, well told. It would be pleasant to end here; but we should do justice neither to the author nor to ourselves, did we not speak the truth, right out. And the truth is--that all these excellences, and the book itself, are almost _in toto_ ruined by the detestable affectation, false sentiment, and sickening transcendentalism of the manner. Young ladies of an æsthetic turn of mind, members of a sentimental clique in some small western town, may think such passages as the following _sweetly pretty_: “She lived opulently in a lofty book;”--monstrous poor lodgings for opulence, it seems to us--“she was industrious; and yet she lived all she could in the woods, and loved to lie down in the hay-fields, or under the oaks on the hill pasture overlooking the village, and warble responses to the birds, and let them sing her at last to sleep. She loved to feed the fishes in meadow-brooks. She built nests for robins and sparrows every spring.” But the author may rely on it, that men of judgment and sense, and women of matured taste, will, according to their natures, laugh at or lament such perversity. For the writer can write better, but chooses to write worse. Some of his descriptions of scenery are simple, terse, and beautiful--some of his glimpses at character true, shrewd, and striking--though his style is, at times, provincial, inelegant, and ungrammatical; as when he writes that some person “like to have done so and so”--meaning that he “was on the point of doing so;” or that a boy’s nostrils “palpitated the spirit of a man,” which is neither grammar nor sense, much less English.