Ponce de Leon ; or, the Rise of the Argentine
Republic. By an Estancioro. (Chapman and Hall.)---The author does not allow for tho shortness of human life. This is a book rather for Hilpa and Shaltnn, and giants "living each a thousand years," than for ephemerals of threescore years and ten. It is an octavo of the largest size, containing nearly four hundred and fifty pages, very closely printed, and would make up, we have calculated, into about six of the ordinary-novel volumes. This is the more to be regretted ; as the story is a really good one, told, it is evident, by one who knows his subject, and written in correct and vigorous English. We do not mean to say that the author should have kept himself to the bare facts of his narrative. A fictitious interest, skilfully introduced, gives a real attraction to history ; but he has overcrowded the scene with incidents and characters. Few readers care to know much about the history of the South-American States which have lost—and not, it must be said, without cause—some of the interest which they possessed when Canning "called a new world into existence, to redress the balance of the old." Yet the subject is not without some intrinsic attraction, especially for Englishmen, whose countrymen had some share in the events which it records. Would it be possible, without changing the character of the work, to bring it within a more moderate compass
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