Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson [pp. 203-220]

1852.3 Kennedy's llorse-Shoe Robinson. 203
The task which we proposed to ourselves is finished.
Our summary is a brief~ one. The Baron DeKaib was
no doubt an energetic and brave man, and a good soldier,
cairn, cool, calculating, ready, and heedful against surprise; but we doubt if there was anything imposing or
remarkable in his endowments. We doubt if he had
either genius or enthnsiasm, and incline rather to think
him a phlegmatic. His caree~ seems to have been without reproach, and his conduct in camp and battle free
from fanits. Our nation owes him gratitude for his services, whatever the degree of merit which he p~ssessed;
and it would be but a simple duty, on the part of the
federal government-or Congress, rather-to institute
proper inquiries after his family, and, if his~descendants
survive, honourably to provide for them.
ART. VIII.-KENNEDY's HORSE-SHOE ROBtNsON.
Horse-Shoe Robinson: a Tale of the Tory Ascendancy.
By JOHN P. KENNEDY, author of "Swailow Barn."
"I say the tale as`twas said to me."-Lay of the
Last iWin~tre1. Revised edition. New-York: Geo.
P. Putnam. 1852.
MR. KENNEDY has acquitted himself with great credit,
and acquired permanent reputation, in sundry departments of literature-the biography, the satire, the descriptive narrative and the novel. His "Life of Wirt" takes
rank among the best of tbe American biographies. His
"Quodlibet," Unacknowledged, but generally understood
to be from his pen, was a trenchant whig satire, over
which that party, renowned for its s&nse of the proprieties, may have chuckled decorously, but which, we suspect, they did no justice to in any more earnest mannerfor which, we apprehend, they did not pay! His "Swallow Barn," by which he was first brought into literary
circles, duly honoured already iii our pages, affords a
lively and piquant portraiture of domestic life in Virginia,
at a period when things wore more salient characteristics
in the "Old Dominion" than at present. The novels of