We notice this book atlength for much the same reason as Dr. Livingston describes his travels in Monomotapa, holding that its perusal has constituted a feat which few will attempt, and fewer still accomplish. Those who, remembering the nature of the author's former performances, take it up in the expectation of encountering a wild and stirring fiction, will be tolerably sure to lay it down ere long with an uncomfortable sensation of dizziness in the head, and yet some such introduction under false pretences seems to afford it its only chance of being taken up at all. For who will meddle with a book professing to inculcate philosophical truths through the medium of nonsensical people talking nonsensethe best definition of its scope and character that a somewhat prolonged consideration has enabled us to suggest. A novel it is not, unless a novel means forty-five conversations held on board a steamer, conducted by personages who might pass for the errata of creation, and so far resembling the Dialogues ofPlato as to be undoubted Greek to ordinary men. Looking at the substance of these colloquies, they cannot be pronounced altogether valueless; looking only at the form, they might well be esteemed the compositions of a March hare with a literary tum of mind. It is not till a lengthened perusal-a perusal more lengthened

thanmanyreaderswillbewillingtoaccord-hasfamiliarizeduswith thequaintnessofthestyle,anduntillongdomesticationwiththeincomprehensibleinterlocutorshasinfecteduswithsomethingoftheir owneccentricity,thatourfaculties,liketheeyesofprisonersaccustomed tothedark,becomesufficientlyacutetodiscernthegoldengrains whichtheauthorhasmadeithisbusinesstohideawayfromus.