The appearance of books often indicates the names though not
the character of the seasons ; and so, although the nights are frosty and days of chilly gloom are freely intermingled with those of sunshine, it would seem that Irish and Continental tours are but beginning, from two publications of the week-
1. Guide through Ireland, by JAMES FRAsER. 2. A Band. Book for Travellers in Switzerland and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont, including the Protestant Vallies of the Waldenses. I. Mr. FRASER's Guide through Ireland is a solid, painstaking, business compilation, combining in one volume the uses of a guide anti a road-book. Making Dublin the head-quarters of the tourist, Mr. FRASER carries him whithersoever roads have pene- trated; laying down his route from the capital to the extremity of each line, and giving at the commencement a list of every town or village on the road, with their respective distances from each other, and their total distance from Dublin. He then proceeds to fill up the route, by describing the points of the intermediate country and the principal features of the towns and villages. A map of Ireland, of remarkable graphic clearness, accompanies the volume, with several local maps or views, and a variety of statis- tical tables. As regards the accuracy of particular facts, we are not in a condition to speak ; but the general arrangement of the volume warrants its recommendation to any one about to make a tour through Ireland. 2. The Hand. Book for Travellers to Switzerland and Savoy, is not only dististinguished for all the qualities which marked its predecessors,—fulness of minute and u3eful information, great accuracy in its facts, much skill in their arrangement, with far more of literary ability and general knowledge than is usually displayed in guide-books,—but also introduces, and for the first time, the Alpine regions of Piedmont and Savoy to the English travel- lers; who may thus have the advantages of Switzerland without its extortion.
The introductory chapters in the present volume are as striking as those in the first Or general views of the country and the people. Here is one—
"in seeking a passage over the Alps, the most obvious course was to find out the vallks which penetrate furthest into the great chain, following the course of the rivers to their sources, and then to take the lowest traversable part in order to descend to the opposite side. The variety and sudden transitions presented by such a route are highly interesting. In the course of one day's journey, the traveller passes from the climate of summer to winter, through spring. The alteration in the productions keeps pace with that of the temperature. Leaving behind him stubble-fields, whence the corn has been removed and housed, he comes to fields yet yellow and waving in the ear ; a few miles further, and the
crop is still green; yet higher, and corn refuses to grow. Before quitting the region of corn, he enters one of dark, apparently interminable forests of pine and larch, clothing the mountain.sides in a sober vestment. Above this, the haymakers are collecting the short grass; the only produce which the ground will yield. Yet the stranger must not suppose that all is barrenness even at this elevation. It seems as though Nature were determined to make one last effort at the confines of the region of vegetation. From beneath the mow-bed, and on the very verge of the glacier, the profusion of flowers, their great variety, and surpassing beauty, are exceedingly surprising. Some of the greatest ornaments of our gamma, here born to blush unseen,—gentians and lilies, hyacinths and blue.bells, intermixed with bushes of the red rhododen- dron, the loveliest production of the Alps, scattered over the velvet turf, give it the appearance of a carpet of richest pattern. The insect world is not less abundant and varied ; thousands of winged creatures are seen hovering over the flowers, enjoying their short existence, for the summer at these elevations lasts but for three or four weeks : the rapid progress of vegetation to maturity is equalled by the rapidity of its decay ; and in eight or ten days flowers and but- terflies have passed away. Above this region of spring, with its gush of springs, its young herbage and vivid greensward, its hum of insects just burst forth, and its natural flower-beds glittering with rain-drops, that of winter in Lapland or Siberia succeeds. All around the summit of a pass over the high Alps, is either snow, glacier, or bare rock. The only plants that grow are dry lichens; which seem intended but to keep up the semblance of vegetation, and to per- petuate nature's cheerful hues of green. The rarefied air is icy cold, and exer- cise and quick motion are necessary to keep up the circulation of the blood. The agreeable murmur of falling water, which has accompanied the traveller hitherto incessantly, here ceases; all is solitude and silence, interrupted only by the shrill whistle of the marmot, or the hoarse cawing of an ill-omened raven The ptarmigan starts up from among heaps of unmelted snow at the traveller's approach ; and the lammergeyer, (the condor of the Alps,) disturbed in his re. past on the carcass of a sheep or cow, is seen soaring upwards in a succession of corkscrew sweeps till he gains the ridge of the Alps, and then disappears.
" Such are the remarkable gradations which the stranger encounters in the course of a few hours on a single pass of the Alps ; but the most striking change of all, is that from the region of snow and ice on the top of the moun- tain to the sunny clime and rich vegetation of Italy, which awaits the traveller at the South foot of the Alps."
Letters from the Mat Indies, by WILLIA t
M Ltova s'D
D. LLoyD accompanied a sort of deputation, consetlee' " JOSEPH STURGE, THOMAS HARVEY, and JOHN SCOHL10.-00; visit they made to the West .Indies during 1836 and 1837, with; view to inquire into the condition of. the Negroes and the entitle' of the Apprenticeship Act ; and, with the same objects, meted his own visit to Demerara. What he saw he wrote an smut of to his friends at home; and on iris return he has poithehed his letters, at their request. As a plain matter-of-fact narrslite literally descriptive of external appearances both natural aei social, this publication will have some interest, especially to the Friends. But the feeble thoughts and style of Dr. LLOYD, tee. dered odd rather than quaint by the unsparing use of Qualst phraseology, will have little attraction to generalreaders; otge, cially since events have superseded all practical interest in the main subject of his Letters—the condition of the Negro appree, tices, and their aptitude for freedom.
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