Kaloolah, or Journeyings to the Djebel Kumri. An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer. Edited by W. S. Mayo, M. D. 1 vol. 12mo.
It is something strange for a writer to present himself for the first time as a candidate for public favor with a volume indicating so much power and originality of mind, and such practiced talents of composition as the present. The book is a regular tale of adventures, as interesting as exciting incidents racily told can make it, and inweaved with the story are many graphic descriptions of scenery and keen delineations of character. Considered in respect to the originality of its conception, the new vein of romance it opens, and the admirable method of the narration, we think the volume cannot fail to attract the attention which it will certainly reward.
The Earth and Man: Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography, in its Relation to the History of Mankind. By Arnold Guyot. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln. 1 vol. 12mo.
The author of this valuable Manual is Professor of Physical Geography and History in the same institution to which Agassiz is attached, and originally delivered the present lectures in French to an audience in Boston. They have been elegantly translated by Professor Felton, of Harvard University, and are very warmly recommended by the New England Savans for their union of profundity and simplicity. The subject is one of the most important in the whole range of science, and is one in which all can take an interest, and all obtain information, as popularized by Professor Guyot. Agassiz says of the book and its author: “Having been his friend from childhood, as a fellow student in college, and as colleague in the same university, I may be permitted to express my high sense of the value of his attainments. Mr. Guyot has not only been in the best school, that of Ritter and Humboldt, and become familiar with the present state of the science of our earth, but he has himself in many instances drawn new conclusions from the facts now ascertained, and presented most of them in a new point of view. Several of the most brilliant generalizations developed in his lectures, are his; and if more extensively circulated, will not only render the study of geography more attractive, but actually show it in its true light, namely, as the science of the relations which exist between nature and man, throughout history.”
The Life of Maximilien Robespierre. With Extracts from his Unpublished Correspondence. By G. H. Lewes. Phila.: Casey & Hart. 1 vol. 12mo.
The author of this biography is but little known in this country, and has hardly received his deserts from the critics on either side of the water. He is a clear, close, vigorous thinker, an accomplished scholar, and a nervous, condensed and brilliant, though slightly aphoristic writer. Though his ideas and style occasionally betray the influence of Carlyle, and though his English nature has been a little modified by an infusion of French metaphysics, he generally appears as an independent as well as a forcible thinker. In the present volume, though he appears largely indebted to the works of Lamartine, Michelet, and Louis Blanc, he has still produced a book original in the main, and has been especially happy in steering a middle course between those writers who have represented Robespierre as a monstrosity of malignity and cruelty, and those who have tried hard to make him appear a persecuted and virtuous patriot, whose most questionable acts sprung from exalted motives. The reader closes the book with the feeling that he has gained a better insight into the character of the immortally infamous revolutionary leader than he had before. The letters of Robespierre, which the author obtained in MS. from Louis Blanc, and the extracts from his speeches in the Convention, add much to the interest and value of the volume.