A Short American Tramp in the Fall of 1864. By
the Editor of Lift in Normandy. (Edmonston and Douglas.)—Whother the record of geo
logical observations which this portly octavo contains will be regarded by the scientific world as of any very great value we shall not pretend to discuss, but the book is a heavy one from a literary point of view. A large part of the tramp consisted of a series of short voyages about the coasts of Labrador and our colonies at the mouth of the St. Lawrence.
Much cannot be expected from the journal of a traveller of this sort, and assuredly nothing of interest—unscientific—will be found in it. Even in the States a hurried series of railway journeys do not enable a man to make any sound estimate of the state of feeling or opinion in a country. Hischaervation is of necessity superficial, anti the author is rather ponderensly superficial. He has, however, no affectation of any sort, and if he_has not made a book, it is perhaps because he did not care to do so. His sympathies seem to have been rather Southern, but not violently so, and, while he has some good stories of the queer people he met with, he has the good sense to have formed a very different esti-
mate of the American people from that of Mr. Dickens or the lesser hnmourists who have followed his lead. It is, he says, in big towns
and political hotels that "English travellers congregate and meet the beings whom they describe. The American people are to be found at their own firesides, or at their several occupations, and so far as I am able to judge they are remarkably like people with whom I am accus- tomed to consort at home. I like them. I found no ill-feeling towards England amongst them. They did not seem to dislike me."
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