CURRENT LITERATURE.
Transatlantic Sketches. By Greville John Chester, B.A. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—Mr. Chester travelled through most of the West India Islands and through a considerable part of the United States, and he records his impressions with a refreshing vigour and frankness of language. His powers in this line are in nowise contemptible. Take this, for instance, of our American cousins :—" To the Celto-Popish taste for profane oaths they add the A.nglo-Puritan penchant for swindling and roguery." That sweeps off a considerable part of the human race. But of all people, the inhabitants of Barbadoes, " Bims," as they call themselves, or are called, most excite his wrath and scorn. The chapters which he devotes to them are models of vituperation. If the k Bims " ever read books, which one gathers from this account they never do, they could not bear it. In the West Indies Mr. Chester was most pleased with the French islands Martinique and Guadeloupe, in the United States the mon of the West chiefly impressed him. It must not be supposed indeed that he does nothing but sneer and satirize. On the contrary, ho is, some prejudices allowed for, a shrewd observer, with a keen hatred for "humbug" (for such things, for instance, as the exhibition of a pair of gloves which the maker intended to have given to President Lincoln, had lie lived, and being disappointed of this sent to a museum), but not failing to appreciate what is deserving of praise. Whatever may bo the value of this or that opinion or observation, there can be no question about his book being exceedingly entertaining and readable. Is ho not in error, by the way, when he says that the inscription ou General Jackson's statue, "The Union must and shall bo preserved," " was apropos to nothing said or done by General Jackson '1 Did not that General deal with South Carolina in a certain summary fashion which made the words appropriate ?
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