Word-Sketches in the Sweet South. By Mary Catherine Jackson. (Bentley.)—In
spite of its sentimental title, this is an unpretend- ing, pleasant volume, a genuine record of the impressions of travel upon a cultivated mind, ready of observation, candid, willing to be amused and gratified. From beginning to end there is neither carping, prejudice, discontent, nor the fino-ladyiem which so often betrays itself in the writings of lady-travellers, by their very boasting of independence, and self-admiring comments upon the luxuries they have actually contrived to do without. Books of travel are terrible tell-tales of temper. We have often read between the lines of them in that sense, but seldom with greater pleasure than iu this instance. Absolute novelty is, perhaps, not to be extracted from any traveller's impressions of Gibraltar, Tangier, Cadiz, Seville, Cordova, and Granada, but there is a certain sort of novelty, fresh and pleasant, in the unaffected, unstrained, unprompted observations of an intelligent and cultivated traveller such as the author of Word-Sketches. Her descrip- tion of Seville is one of the best, and quite the simplest within mu- knowledge.
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