A pleasant book, well written, and containing much information just now, peculiarly valuable in relation to Oregon and California. Many strange phases of life in the wilderness and prairie, are described by one who knows its peculiar hardships and pleasures. The terrible sufferings, the awful stories told of the early emigrants, are faithfully given, and, if official accounts be true, are scarcely exaggerated. A valuable appendix on the gold country is added, undoubtedly to be relied on. The book is well illustrated in wood.
The Parterre, a Collection of Flowers Culled by the Wayside. By D. W. Belisle. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott & Co., 1849.
A pretty looking volume, very creditable to the publishers in a typographical point of view, and containing a number of poems of various lengths, on a variety of subjects. The longest, Wallenpaupack, is an attempt, and a very creditable one also, to commemorate an incident of the history of the North American Indian, a source of poetical subjects too much neglected. The book is well worth attention. It may not be uninteresting to state that the type has all been set up by the author.
Roland Cashel. By Charles Lever. Illustrated by Phiz. New York: Harper & Brothers.
This is probably the best novel of one of the most popular novelists of the day. Lever has not much solidity of mind, and accordingly never produces any masterpieces of characterization or passion, but he has a quicksilver spirit of frolic and drollery, and an intensity of mirthful feeling which have made some critics place him on a level with Dickens. The present volume will more than sustain the reputation which his former frolicksome audacities have attained.
EDITOR’S TABLE.
“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”