_bit_ by the maniac’s sword. The rest of the work has little more of interest, than that which we have thus seen: it is all the transactions of a few men in a swamp, to illustrate the partisan warfare in the south, without interest or useful information. The work is made up of these _illustrations_, and the trivial adventures of an individual. There is nothing startling enough to please, or to excite but a drowsy interest. Notwithstanding the author tells us that it is his aim “to delineate with all the rapidity of one, who, with the mystic lantern, runs his uncouth shapes and varying shadows along the gloomy wall, startling imagination, and enkindling curiosity,” his delineations are slow, and imagination and curiosity are left to their slumbers. The author who promises a novel purely historical, in which true history is his chief object, promises much—such promises it requires no ordinary mind to fulfill; and the work before us must be looked upon only as a novel—one, in which fiction, as usual, supplies most of the material. In this, as in the other works of this author, there is shown the want of all those powers which mark genius. It has no deeply drawn characters, no marks of deep insight into the human heart. There is nothing about the hero, that should set him apart from other men in his vocation; and Col. Walton, with a weakness that seems like dotage, although he is in the prime of life, hesitates long between private interest and patriotism; and is at last _driven_ to side with his country—a character despised to the last—a lie upon the high minded patriots of the south, who staked their princely fortunes and their lives, in the cause of freedom. The other characters, by which the author has endeavored to excite a higher interest, are Frampton and Porgy. Both are failures, and the most accurate idea we get of the latter, is where he is turned _grunter_, to catch three terrapins, that are “_basking_ in the starlight,” upon a tree that has fallen into the creek. Mr. Simms should never again attempt wit, or humor, unless when he is dealing with the negro character, in which he sometimes succeeds. Kate Walton is a high minded girl enough. We see but little of her; but she should not have aimed the pistol at Col. Proctor; and when she snapped it, the weapon should not have missed fire. Singleton shows little sense of propriety, not to speak of affection, when he pressed his suit the moment after leaving the bedside of his dying sister; and the girl rebukes him well: “How can you know it—how can you feel it, Robert, when you come from the presence of one already linked, as it were, with heaven, and thus immediately urge to me so earthly a prayer?” Emily Singleton—the fading flower— “There is a beauty in woman’s decay;”