20 APRIL 1867, Page 21

Prose Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. Two vols. (Boston, Tick-

nor and Fields ; London, Trubner.)—Remembering Mr. Whittier as a peek we are rather disappointed with him as a prose writer. His sketches of Bunyan, Andrew Marvell, Richard Baxter, Ellwood—Milton's friend, and other old and modern worthies, are the best things in these two volumes, and "Margaret Smith's Journal in the Province of Massa- chusetts Bay, 1678-9," so far as we have read it, is a pleasing, quiet story. But we expect more from the collected prose writings of a man who has made a name among American authors, and the absence of anything that may be called striking is more to be noticed than the maintenance of a fair level of thought and expression.