Mr. Macaulay has been passing the Winter and Spring in Italy.
The Late Mr. John Glanville Taylor, an Englishman, left in MS. a work upon The United States and Cuba, which has just been published by Bentley, and is announced for republication by Mr. Hart of Philadelphia. Mr. Taylor was born in 1810, and when about twenty-one years of age he left Liverpool for the United States, on a mining speculation. After travelling a few months in this country, he was induced to go to Cuba to examine a gold vein of which he thought something might be made. The place in Cuba which was to be the scene of his operations, was the neighborhood of Gibara, on the north-eastern side of the island, which he reached by sailing from New-York to St. Jago de Cuba, and travelling across the island forty-five leagues. The gold vein turned out a wretched failure; and, after having been put to some disagreeable shifts to maintain himself, Mr. Taylor resolved to settle as a planter in Holguin—the district to which Gibara forms the port of entry. Returning to the United States, he made the necessary arrangements; and in the summer of 1843, was established on his hacienda, in partnership with an American who had been long resident in that part of the island. In this and the following year, however, the east of Cuba was visited by an unprecedented drought; causing famine which, though it destroyed many lives and ruined thousands of proprietors, attracted no more attention, he says, in England, than was implied by "a paragraph of three lines in an English newspaper." The west of Cuba was at the same time devastated by a tremendous hurricane, accompanied by floods; and, all his Cuban prospects being thus blasted, the author was glad to return to New-York in September, 1845, whence, after a short stay, he returned to England. He did not long, however, remain in his native country, but left it for Ceylon, where he died suddenly in January, of the present year. His United States and Cuba: Eight Years of Change and Travel, was left in MS., and within a few weeks has been printed. It is a work of much less value than Mr. Kimball's Cuba and the Cubans, published in New-York last year. Of that very careful and judicious performance Mr. Taylor appears to have made considerable use in the preparation of his own, and his agreement with Mr. Kimball may be inferred from the fact that, though pointedly protesting that he does not advocate the annexation of Cuba to the United States, he holds that "worse things might happen,"—and indeed hints that sooner or later the event is inevitable. Of Cuba and the Cubans, we take this opportunity to state that a new and very much improved edition will soon be issued by Mr. Putnam.
Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley has in the press of Bentley her Travels in the United States. She passed about two years, we believe, in this country. She has written several books, in verse and prose, but we never heard that any body had read one of them.
The Nile Notes, by Mr. Curtis, have been republished in London by Bentley, and the book is as much approved by English as by American critics. The Daily News says:
"The author is evidently a man of great talent."
Leigh Hunt, in his Journal, that—
"It is brilliant book, full of thought and feeling."