* * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie. By Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._ We are glad that Professor Longfellow has, in this volume, produced a poem which, while it indicates his capacity as a writer, is practically a triumphant answer to various depreciating criticisms on his writings. It has been said that his strength lay in small lyrics and didactics; that he had not sufficient force of feeling and imagination to create a poem. Here is a long and elaborate effort, extending to some hundred and sixty pages, where the strictest unity of effect is combined with great variety of character, incident, scenery, sentiment, and description. It has been said that his love of thought, if not his imagery and ideas, were borrowed from foreign sources, and that he rather polished than created. Here is a poem almost entirely American, blooming with flowers, and fragrant with odors peculiar to his own continent, and reflecting in its beautiful verse the streams, valleys, and mountains of his native land. It has been said that a certain foppery and effeminate elegance characterized his fancy; and that he dared not trust himself in the delineation of actual homely objects, where the poetic effect could not be produced by cunning combinations of words, but must result from the exercise of a pure and bright imagination. Here is a poem, in which whole pages are devoted to the delineation of humble, hearty farmers and mechanics, evincing an almost Chaucerian trust in things as opposed to words, giving clear pictures of objects and characters, replete with a sweet, humane humor, and producing poetry of effect by intensity and clearness of imaginative conception. Basil, the blacksmith, and Benedict, are as vivid and true as the delineations of Crabbe. Any farmer or smith would instantly recognize them as genuine. Yet the poet, by his subtil power of discerning the spirit beneath the rough external appearance, has given them an intrinsic beauty and dignity which would entitle them to rank with kings. He has, with a severe simplicity, fixed his gaze steadily on the human heart and soul, and we recognize in his delineations, humanity as well as the externals of rural life.