ments are singularly incorrect. Mr. Stevenson, an English engineer of some celebrity, travelled the same route as Mr. Dickens did, and speaks of our wooden bridges in quite a different tone. There is not a wooden bridge in Europe which will compare with the one at Columbia; and Mr. Stevenson says, that excepting the slide at Aushach, the Portage railroad is the boldest work in the world."

THE WESTERN CAPTIVE, or The Times of Tecumseh. A Tale by Mrs. Seba Smith. New York: J. Winchester.

The accomplished authoress of this story has won the favorable regards of all lovers of sweet fancy and pure sentiment, by her "Sinless Child," an elaborate poem which appeared, a few months since, in a southern periodical. In her present work, we find more to admire in the occasional revelations of sentiment, and descriptions of scenery, than in the plot or characters of the tale. There are several passages of beautiful composition; and the grace and ideal spirit of a poetess is continually displayed. We trust the success of this production will encourage Mrs. Smith to attempt a higher range of prose, in which her eminent success may be confidently predicted.

THULIA: A Tale of the Antarctic, by J. C. Palmer, U. S. N. New York: Samuel Colman.

A good idea and a pleasant that of thus constructing a tasteful memorial of some incidents of the Exploring Expedition. The loss of the Peacock consigned to oblivion many valuable records relating to this important voyage. Dr. Palmer has woven some agreeable rhymes descriptive of a few of the vicissitudes and feelings experienced in these far-distant seas; and calling to his aid that most elegant of publishers, Mr. Samuel Colman, they have, by the help of A. T. Agate, one of the artists of the Expedition, furnished the public with a beautiful ornament for the centre-table and boudoir, and one, we should think every officer of the navy would delight to present to some fair friend. We have seen no wood cuts in this country, comparable with those which illustrate this volume, either for chaste design or finished execution.

RAMBLES IN YUCATAN: including a visit to the remarkable ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabah, Zayi, and Urmal. By B. M. Norman. New York: J. and H. G. Langley.

This is a valuable addition to the records of American Travel. It refers to a country but partially known, and yet at present exciting much inter

THE CONDITION AND FATE OF ENGLAND. By the author of The Glory and Shame of England. New York: J. & H. G. Langley.

The publishers of this work have set an example of typographical neatness and convenient form in the various important books they have issued, which we should like to see more generally followed south of New England. The value of Mr. Lester's new volumes consists almost wholly in the facts, political, social and moral, which he has collected and arranged. The political economist will examine these statistics with interest; and the impartial reader must acknowledge that many of the positions assumed in the "Glory and Shame of England" are amply sustained in the present work. Mr. Lester proves the existence of terrible abuses, outraged rights and heart-rending misery. We cannot however sympathize in the tone of asperity and evident pride of argument, which seem to have provoked him to the task thus, in many respects, successfully accomplished. While we are often obliged to say "tis true," we also feel deeply that ". pity 't is, 't is true." We wish the author had exhibited the "silver lining" to the cloud. We believe that in the fate of nations as well as individuals, there is a divine principle of compensation. There is, for instance, infinitely less slavery to public opinion in the duchy of Florence, under the absolute government of an Austrian prince, than in the republican city of Boston. But in the former, popular education and equal rights are unknown. In discussing the existent evils that threaten the British isle, we would that Mr. Lester had glanced at some of those redeeming associations which brighten her destiny. While we commend this work for the information it contains and the occasional vivacity with which it is written, we must pronounce it a melancholy compend of painful truths. If their announcement, in this shape, has the least influence in hastening the epoch of social reform and benevolent effort, the author will have better reason to congratulate himself than is often the case in the annals of controversy.

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Ir is impossible to cast even a careless glance over the literature of the last thirty years, without perceiving the prominent station occupied by critics, reviewers and essayists. Criticism, in the old days of Monthly Reviews and Gentlemen's Magazines, was quite an humble occupation, and was chiefly monopolized by the "barren rascals" of letters, who scribbled, sinned and starved in attics and cellars; but it has since been almost exalted into a creative art, and numbers among its professors some of the most accomplished writers of the age. Dennis, Rhymer, Winstanley, Theophilus Cibber, Griffiths, and other eminent hands," as well as the nameless contributors to defunct periodicals and deceased pamphlets, have departed, body and soul, and left not a wreck behind; and their places have been supplied by such men as Coleridge, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lamb, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, Wilson, Gifford, Mackintosh, Sidney Smith, Hallam, Campbell, Talfourd and Brougham. Indeed, every celebrated writer of the present century, without, it is believed, a solitary exception, has dabbled or excelled in criticism. It has been the road to fame and profit, and has commanded both applause and guineas, when the unfortunate objects of it have been blessed with neither. Many of the strongest minds of the age will leave no other record behind them, than critical essays and popular speeches. To those who have made criticism a business, it has led to success in other professions. The Edinburgh Review, which took the lead in the establishment of the new order of things, was projected in a lofty attic by two briefless barristers and a titheless parson; the former are now lords, and the latter is a snug prebendary, rejoicing in the reputation of being the finest wit and smartest divine of the age. That celebrated journal made reviewing more

respectable than authorship. It was started at a time when the degeneracy of literature demanded a radical reform, and a sharp vein of criticism. Its contributors were men who possessed talents and information, and so far held a slight advantage over most of those they reviewed, who did not happen to possess either. Grub street quarterly quaked to its foundations, as the northern comet shot its portentous glare into the dark alleys, where bathos and puerility buzzed and hived. citizens of Brussels, on the night previous to Waterloo, were hardly more terror-struck than the vast array of fated authors who, every three months, waited the appearance of the baleful luminary, and, starting at every sound which betokened its arrival,

The

"Whispered with white lips, the foe! it comes! it comes!"

In the early and palmy days of the Review, when reviewers were wits and writers were hacks, the shore of the great ocean of books was "heaped with the damned like pebbles." Like an "eagle in a dovecote," it fluttered the leaves of the Minerva press, and stifled the weak notes of imbecile elegance, and the dull croak of insipid vulgarity, learned ignorance, and pompous humility. The descent of Attila on the Roman Empire was not a more awful visitation to the Ítalians, than the "fell swoop" of the Edinburgh Review on the degenerate denizens of Grub street and Paternoster row. It carried ruin and devastation wherever it went, and in most cases it carried those severe but providential dispensations to the right places, and made havoc consistent both with political and poetic justice. The Edinburgh reviewers were found not to be of the old school of critics. They were not contented with the humble task of chronicling the appearance of