New York News, 26 May 1856.

It is not long since we heard some pessimist lamenting the decline of Mr. Melville's brilliance as a writer. Now if the decay of which the said literary mourner complains be not in himself, we recommend him to purchase and peruse the delightful "Piazza Tales." They will effectually correct the acidity of his criticism. But we are inclined to think that the source of discontent is only the altered mood of the reader to whom we have referred, as we can nowhere find in any of Mr. Melville's writings the slightest rational symptom of deterioration. They are, we admit, moulded in styles different from the peculiar setting of Typee, but that fact only proves the versatility of the pen which prepared them. Typee was something so new and so strikingly original that it at once attracted the universal gaze. It was the first fresh flower of Mr. Melville's fancy, at least the first conspicuously offered by him to the public. All were startled and charmed by its beauty. Thus the earliest emotion of surprise and pleasure was exhausted, and had the same author's succeeding works been very greatly superior to the first, this enthusiasm could not be so easily aroused again.

Our readers will acknowledge that our remark is well founded. A precisely similar cause operates upon the public judgment respecting all achievements of the human mind. The orator, the advocate, the poet, the artist, the dramatist, the actor, is constantly, and we think quite unreasonably, expected to surpass himself; and if he does not, the world says he is declining, when a more philosophical examination of his efforts would prove the reverse. Intellect is not always revealed in a succession of surprises, but rather by its permanent and steady blaze. The human eye becomes at length tamely accustomed to the corruscations of the meteor which dazzled, at its first appearance--the common ear grows familiar at last with the crash of artillery, whose first detonation almost stunned it-- yet the meteor is none the less bright; the ordnance not a whit fainter than before.

Again, the mood of the reader's mind has much to do with his appreciation of a work. The noblest periods sometimes fall dead upon his intelligence, and what would have enraptured him in hours of health and sunshine wearies him in moments of illness and gloom. By-the-bye, too, has not every one observed how vast a difference a good dinner and a bottle of champagne--especially if assisted by a prefix of distinction and pre-acquired reputation, no matter how undeservedly!--makes in the general estimate of a given individual's importance and ability!

We have read the Piazza Tales with genuine pleasure. The "Piazza" itself, with which the book opens, is one of the most charming sketches in our language. It is followed by "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno," "The Lightning Rod Man," the "Encantadas; or Enchanted Isles" and "The Bell Tower."

Each of these is a gem and each entirely unlike anything else we ever read, although the quaint, wild humor and melodramatic effects of the Lightning Rod Man and the Bell Tower do remind of Poe in his strangest mood. The series of beautifully written sketches embraced under the title of the Enchanted Isles exert an indefinable but irresistible sway over the imagination and may be read and dwelt upon again and again, like [the most] gorgeous poem. In fact, if we may use such a comparison and be understood, Mr. Melville's prose, particularly in his magnificent descriptions of scenery, sea and cloud-land, resembles the Tennysonian verse. It possesses all the glowing richness, exquisite coloring and rapid, unexpected turn of phrase that distinguishes the Poet Laureate of our day--Mariana of the Piazza, "the lonely girl, sewing at a lonely window; the pale-cheeked girl and fly-specked window, with wasps about the mended upper panes"--has a distinct and yet not traceable relationship to "Marianna in the Moated Grange." The very cadence of the thought--the same heart melody--fills both [a few words missing] Marianna wins us most.