30 SEPTEMBER 1865, Page 23

Scraps and Sketches Gathered Together. By Sir Lascelles Wraxall, Bart.

2 vols. (Allen and Co.)—The late Sir Lascelles Wraxall, like Ulysses, " mnitorum providus nrbes, et mores hominum inspoxit." "Providus " certainly of the wants of the public in the way of light literature, and the facile pen that he had at their disposal. In these volumes, correctly denominated Scraps and Sketches, we are taken to most of the scenes that travelling civilized man affects, Imperial Paris and the Bois de Boulogne, the Alpine grass-farms, Baden and the Black Forest, Cairo and Constantinople. Tolerably accurate and lively descriptions of these places, and the people that are found in them, and of such phases of life as barricade-fighting and brigand-hunting, &arta- playing and Paris suppers, with one or two odd articles on such subjects as "Railway Literature" and "Dinners," some short sensational tales, and an ambitious essay on America from the height of a baronetcy, are here collected together in a readable medley.