The Romance of Commerce. By J. Macdonald Oxley. (W. and
R. Chambers.)—The text, so to speak, of Mr. Oxley's volume is,— "There has been a romance of commerce no less than a romance of war." He illustrates it by telling the story of the Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company. More might have been made of the second. Of course there was the difficulty that the whole volume might have been filled, and, indeed, twice filled, with the narrative. Still, the treatment here given is inadequate. An interesting chapter is furnished by the " Quest of a North-West Passage." This is not very good. It is too general, and it is surely a mistake to put Sir John Franklin at the head of Arctic explorers. " John Law and the Mississippi Bubble," " The Darien Expedition," " The South Sea Bubble," and " The Tulip Mania," follow. The account of Sable Island, under the title of " An Ocean Graveyard," will be new to many readers. It is not every one that knows that Sable Island is off the most southerly point of Nova Scotia. This chapter and those that follow it, " From Forest to Floor," on the lumber tracts of Canada, and the " Mediter- ranean" (i.e., the great lake system) of Canada, an account of Hudson's Bay, are distinctly the most valuable in the volume.
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