Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), June 21, 1845, vol. 1, no. 25, p. ??

[page 395, column 2, continued:]

NEW WORKS LATELY RECEIVED.

Satanstoe, or the Little page Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony: by J. Fennimore Cooper. In 2 vols. New-York: Burgess, Stringer & Co.

Satanstoe appears to be the first of a series of three tales written to illustrate a principle, the principle of anti-rentism, which Mr. Cooper considers a greater disgrace to the State of New-York than repudiation to Mississippi. We have but little faith in stories that are written to illustrate any other principle than the principle of human nature, and we doubt whether Satanstoe will be read with much interest by any class excepting those who have read the author's other productions, for he sake of the story. It appears that Satanstoe is a neck of land somewhere in Westchester county, its precise locality we are not acquainted with, but it is probably in the neighborhood of Devilshoof. Of the merits of the work we are unable to speak at present. We give the concluding paragraph of the author's preface, for the sake of its manly tone, which will meet with a hearty response from all honest men.

“For ourselves, we conceive that true patriotism consists in laying bare every thing like public vice, and in calling things by their right names. The great enemy of the race has made a deep inroad upon us, within the list ten or a dozen years, under cover of a spurious delicacy on the subject of expressing national ills; and it is time that they who have not been afraid to praise when praise was merited, should not shrink from the office of censuring, when the want of timely warnings may be one cause of the most fatal evils. The great practical defect of institutions like ours, is the circumstance that “what is every body's business, is nobody's business,” a neglect that gives to the activity of the rogue a very dangerous ascendency over the more dilatory corrections of the honest man.”