I read the “Recluse,” translated from D’Arlincourt’s popular novel Le Solitaire, and think the commendations bestowed upon it, in the translator’s preface, just in the main.  It is precisely such a novel as I should suppose would be very popular in the highest circles of France, and consequently, owing to difference of character, would be less relished by the same circles in England.  I suspect the author to be a great admirer of Chateaubriand’s “Atala,” whose death is brought to mind by the catastrophe of Elode’s.  Here, however, the similitude ends.  There is nothing to be said respecting the comparative features of Charles the Bold and Chactas, except that the Indian possessed those qualities of the heart which most ennoble human nature.

To the readers of Scott’s novels, however (for he is certainly the “Great Unknown"), this pleasing poetical romance, with all its sparkling passages, will present one glaring defect—­it is not sufficiently descriptive.  We rise from the perusal of it with no definite ideas of the scenery of the valley of Underlach.  We suppose it to be sublime and picturesque, and are frequently told so by the author; but he fails in the description of particular scenes.  Scott manages otherwise.  When he sends Baillie Nicoll Jarvie into the Highlands, he does not content himself with generalities, but also brings before the mind such groups and scenes as make one fear and tremble.  To produce this excitement is literary power.

23d.  I devoted the time before breakfast, which, with us, happens at a late hour, to the Edinburgh Review.  I read the articles on Greenough’s “First Principles of Geology,” and a new edition of Demosthenes.  When shall we hear the last panegyric of the Grecian orator, who, in the two characteristics of his eloquence which have been most praised, simplicity and nature, is every day equalled, or excelled, by our Indian chiefs?

Greenough’s Essays are bold and original, and evince no weak powers of observation and reasoning.  But he is rather a leveler than a builder.  It seems better that we should have a poor house over our heads than none at all.  The facts mentioned on the authority of a traveler in Spain, that the pebbles in the rivers of that country are not carried down streams by the force of the current, are contradicted by all my observations on the rivers of the United States.  The very reverse is true.  Those streams which originate in, or run through districts of granite, limestone, graywacke, &c., present pebbles of these respective rocks abundantly along their banks, at points below the termination of the fixed strata.  These pebbles, and even boulders, are found far below the termination of the rocky districts, and appear to owe their transportation to the force of existing currents.  I have found the peculiar pebbles of the sources of the Mississippi as low down as St. Louis and St. Genevieve.

I resumed the perusal of Marshall’s “Life of Washington,” which I had laid by in the fall.  Lieutenants Barnum and Bicker and Mr. Johnston came to visit me.