The Southern States of North America. By Edward King. (Blackie.)
—This is a record of a journey made through the fifteen ex-Slave States of North America, an area more than twelve times as large as that of England, though not containing more than two-thirds of its population, during the year 1873, and a considerable part of 1874. It was under- taken on behalf of Scribner's Monthly Magazine, and as Mr. King was accompanied by an artist-in-chief, Mr. W. Wells Champney, and had besides other assistance in this line, the commission, it must be allowed, was a munificent ono. None of our Magazines is likely to attempt anything so splendid, though surely it would be better than paying thousands at pounds for a novel. Only we have no mission of such surpassing interest to be undertaken. The North wants to know the truth about the South. From all that we can see, Mr. Bing has told it. He holds the balance evenly. He does not despair of the future of the South, though he thinks that the doom of the old planting aristocracy is irrevocably fixed. The tale that he tells of their downfall and misery in the early chapters of his book, where he describes New Orleans, once the scene of their glory, is piteous indeed,—piteous even when we remember that they were the cruelest of all aristocracies. But as New Orleans is not all ruin, so Mr. King's book is not all gravity and serious information. Individual planters may have to put up with Bourbon whisky instead of champagne, and pork instead of venison, if venison is a Southern dainty, but Orleans still has its carnival, and can fill the galleries of its theatres with bevies of beauties unrivalled anywhere, England, of course, patriotically excepted. Grave and gay are mingled indeed throughout the volume with admirable skill. Mr. King can be as serious and instructive as a Special Commis- sioner in a famine district, and as lively as a Special Correspondent at a Royal wedding. His descriptions of scenery, again, are specially com- mendable ; his account, for instance, in chapter xiv., of a journey "Up the Oclawaha to Silver Spring," is a graphic picture of sub-tropical scenery. Imagine a channel of spring water, (delightful sight, in the land of muddy rivers!) almost as-shed over with a luxuriant growth of every variety of form and colour, ending, or rather beginning, in the "Silver Spring" itself, a pool of thirty or forty feet in depth, and showing each peeble at the bottom. But it is idle to attempt even to give an idea of the contents of this book, with its eight hundred closely printed pages, and its striking illustrations, nearly as numerous. If you want facts, political or commercial, or bright sketches of social life, or graphic descriptions of nature in the Southern States, you cannot do hotter than go to Messrs. King and Champney for them.
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