Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South Africa. By R. Gordon Cumming. New York: Harper & Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo.
A rare sportsman is Gordon Cumming—none of your followers of snipe and grouse, of fox or stag, but a Cæsar or Napoleon among hunters, a shooter of the giraffe and the rhinoceros, the lion and the elephant, and a great many other wild beasts, which your “even Christian” trembles to behold in their tamed and caged menagerie representatives. Seriously, this book is the most exciting production of the kind we have ever read, and though full of marvels, detailed in a style a little Mendez-Pintoish, is probably substantially true. The author is a kinsman of the Duke of Argyle, (to whom the volumes are dedicated,) is an English officer, and a “Person of Honor;” his statements, we suppose, must be taken as facts, as nobility, like figures, cannot lie, and as the author’s gentle blood did not come to him in a line of descent from William Longbow. Whether, however, Gordon Cumming has drawn a great deal from his imagination or not, his book is an interesting one, and proclaims him a cool, daring, invincible hunter—the greatest since Nimrod. Take away from him a hundred of the elephants he swears he shot, and he will have left enough to make a great reputation. In addition to the hunting scenes, the volumes contain no little information respecting the Hottentots and Bushmen, and some splendid descriptions of African scenery.
Leaflets of Memory; an Illuminated Annual for 1851. Edited by Reynell Coates, M. D. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co.
The enterprising publishers of this most beautiful book, deserve the warmest thanks of the public for the exquisite taste displayed in all of their gift books for 1851; but especially for the wealth of elegance which marks the volume before us in all its appointments. To Butler & Co. justly belongs the credit of having rescued the Annuals of the country from that contempt to which they were fast sinking, and placing them side by side with the highest efforts of art in Europe. Nor has the editor failed to do his part nobly. The marks of the severe and elegant taste of Dr. Coates are visible on every page, and his fine mind sends forth its flashes like sparkles from a diamond in his own articles.
The illuminated plates by Sinclair are wonders of art, surpassing in delicacy of execution any that we have seen in this style; and Sartain, in his beautiful mezzotints, seems to have shared the inspiration largely of his co-laborers in this garden of beauty. We shall be amazed, if an immense sale of the Leaflets does not reward the prodigality of Mr. Butler.
The Female Poets of America. Edited by Thomas Buchanan Read. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co.
This is a magnificent holyday gift, issued in a style of splendor that Butler alone can be chargeable with. Printed on superb paper, and filled with fine portraits of the leading American female writers, and gorgeous with illuminated plates by Sinclair. Mr. Read, the Editor, who is both poet and painter, has given us a token of remembrance in this fine volume that will live in many libraries and many hearts. It is just the volume to present to a lady of taste for a New Year’s Gift. No reader of “Graham” should fail to look at it.