GIFT•BOOKS. * THE approach of December has produced, as usual, various

gift- books, of various character, and designed for various readers. Of the present collection the late Mr. Bogue contributes the whole ; their completion taking place apparently at the very time of their publisher's death.

Foremost of the number appears our old friend The Keepsake ; looking as young as ever with regard to externals. The aristo-

cratic names that studded its pages during the editorship of Lady Blessington have finally left her niece, but some literary celebri- ties still rally round her. Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Barry Corn- wall, Albert Smith, Chorley, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, furnish pieces in prose or verse. Well-known names in Annual litera- ture also appear—as Mrs. Abdy, Mrs. Newton Crossland ; while some contributors have been exercised in both fields—like Charles Swain and Nicholas Michell.

It is the professional writers, we think, who give to The Keep- sake such character and force as it possesses. The subjects may be slight, and the authors may not rise "to the top of their bent" ; but their choice has more of reality about it, and less of common- place' than that of the amateurs ; their treatment exhibits more of "knowing one's business." Of the band, Barry Cornwall's contribution is the most appropriate to the Annual, if it be not poetically the best ; which patness to the purpose in the poems of Mr. Procter we have often noticed bpfore. This present con- tribution has a retrospective cast—a touch of Time and his influ- ence, that may be marked in several writers of the same standing.

"TO AN OLD PLAT3LATE.

"Boat thou still remember me ?

I remember thee and thine, When the young and careless hours All were thine and mine ; When we hid our eyes in flowers, Laughing at the ruling powers, Dreaming life divine.

"Dreams of books, or barren learning, Troubled not our summer sleep ; Genius (just alit) was burning lathe heart's recesses deep ; O'er the sunny waters sailing, Want, nor wo, nor friendship failing,

Taught 11B then to weep.

"Life has lost its sweeter season, Spring has shrunk to winter cold, And, for some bad earthly reason,

We (who once were young) are old. Dimmed are all our sunshine glories, And our thousand pleasant stories—

All are past and told !

"Yet, life's thoughtful angel ileeth Through a gentler, calmer air ; And a hand that no one seeth Shields us from despair : So, though autumn falls in showers, We will trust to brightet hours, As when we hid our eyes in flowers, And dreamed the world was fair."

In prose Albert Smith throws off some Alpine facts and obser- vation "about Chamois and Hunters " ; and Nathaniel Hawthorne gives a pleasant narrative of a pilgrimage from Lichfield to Ut- toxeter, to visit the market-place where Johnson stood bareheaded in penance for some unknown undutifillness to his father. There are plenty of Annual tales, some by old, some by new story-tel- lers. Among these, Miss Power's "Frank Leslie's Wife," and "Too Late—a Tale of the War," by Mrs. Ward, are the freshest; the tone in one case, the subject in the other, being of the day.

• The Keepsake, 1857. Edited by Miss Power. With Engravings from Drawings hy the first Artists, engraved under the superintendence of Mr. Frederick A. Heath. Published by Bogue. Rhymes and Roundelays in Praise of a Country Life. Adorned with many Pic- tures. Published by Bogue. The Young Toyer* ; or a Narrative of Hunting Adventures in Southern Africa. By Captain itare Reid, Author of" The Boy Hunters," 4-c. With twelve Illus- trations, by William Harvey. Published by Bogue.

Less of convention in the majority would have been an improve- ment.

The engravings show the declining estate of Annualism ; such names, and we may add such designs, as those of Brooks, Dukes Gush, Dicksee, and Solomon, failing certainly to represent thZ higher art of the day. The beat name is that of Mr. Thorburu, whose portrait of Lady Molesworth is engraved ; the best design that of Mr. Naish to the tale of" Too Late." This group of two sisters, looking out of window on the horizon-line of sea, with its approaching ships, is simple, pleasant, and unaffected ; marked by a lifelike everyday truth of accessory, and neither frittered away nor hackneyed in effect and character. Of the remaining ten plates, five are portraits or single figures, of the fancy-por- trait order.

Mr. Bogue's second publication, Rhymes and Roundelays, is a good design, sufficiently well executed in regard to its literature. The various seasons, the songsof birds, woods and streams, the various appearances of nature, flocks and herds, country sports, and Christmas festivities, are illustrated panegyrically by quotations from the poets. The selections are drawn from English and American authors, with a few translations, and from writers famous or obscure. Among the famous, are Spenser, Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Milton, Herrick, as representatives of the seven- teenth century ; Thomson, Goldsmith, Walton, of the eighteenth; but neither Gray, Collins, Burns, nor any of Queen Anne's tribe are drawn upon. The famous poets of the present century are quite a heap : among the dead, are Rogers, Wordsworth, Cole- ridge, Southey, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hood ; and in the ranks of the living, Tennyson, Longfellow, Landor, Howitt, Keble. Some of the obscurer names will be new to many ; they are chiefly American. The half-forgotten poets who have a sort of twilight existence will be not the least pleasing in some way or other. There is a passage from Otway descriptive of morning, very real but somewhat literal ; there is a more elaborate picture of the same subject from Cunningham, (not Allan,) slight but pleasing; Dyer's long-forgotten Fleece furnishes a bit, descriptive of sheep- shearing ; while Hogg, Bernard Barton, and many minor poets for two hundred years past, are laid under contribution.

In a gift-book, which is rather for the drawingroom or boudoir than the library, the standard of critical taste is not expected to be of the highest ; general popularity is the thing to be aimed at. For our own album, we might have confined the descriptions to English subjects, or at least to scenery of the United Kingdom; probably, too, we might have substituted some other specimens for those we find, and occasionally taken longer examples. Another principle of selection however, comes into play, besides the popularity already hinted at,—that of the illustrations. For ex- ample, the picture probably had quite as much to do as the poetry with the sheep-shearing or rather the sheep-washing.

In the present ease, the wood-cut illustrations have not enough in them for such preeminence, being more than commonlycha- racterless. Mr. Birket Foster is considerably more distinguished for elegance than for character or the other robuster qualities of a draughtsman; but here, in the general level, he stands out as the strongest man of the batch. His moonlit castellated rock is ef- fecfr, though too dependent upon that obvious kind of getting- up which reminds one of a scene at a theatre—the kind of scene which all the 'Papers praise for "magical effect," "poetic illu- sion," and the like. The sun rising over the sea is another skil- ful design, less ad captandum but more satisfactory in the long run. Among the other artists, Messrs. Hulme and Read con- tribute landscape Mr. Weir landscape with animals, Messrs. Ab- solon and Goodall (in a feeble manner) figures and Messrs. Noel Humphreys and Macquoid, with Mrs. Hay, floral and other orna- mental devices.

Captain Mayne Reid's Young Yagers suggests the query whether there is really any such thing as "knowledge made easy," any royal road or primrose path even to information? If we trust to purposes and promises, the answer would be "Yes." There are historical novels that will tell us all about a monarch and his times in the form of a romance. Nay, there are histories that aim at much the same thing, subordinating instruction to amuse- ment, the former being "dry." We are indoctrinated with theology and ethics in novels. Natural philosophy has long been set in entertaining frameworks and dialogues ; while latterly we have had parts of that subject expounded. in fanciful biographies. We do not know that any mathematician has announced. a _Royal Road to Mathematics, but some have insinuated the idea. Independently of the temptation of looking to the entertain- ment or flattering the idleness of the reader in these sorts of books' there is a tendency in the writer to sacrifice the didactic truth for the sake of the fictitious or romantic effect. How ca- pital as tales were Miss Martineau's Illustrations of Political Eco- nomy; but then, how dogmatically onesided. Having begun with a "view," the novelist found it necessary to keep right on ; for what a drag and mar-all would have been limitations, and qualifications, and the principle of "much may be said on both sides !" When art or practice rather than science IS the "fundamental feature" of the fiction, we fear that ac- curacy is equally sacrificed to effect. How Cooper used to bend nautical probability, if not possibility, to forward or re- tard the story, trusting to "not being found" out by the critics ! Of living writers, Captain Mayne Reid is one of the best, who mingle in a tale of adventure, geograRbical and botanical information, with accounts of "animated na- ture," including wild men as well as birds and wild beasts. Its amusing reading it is capital ; though the dramatic march is sometimes interrupted by a " little didactic description or discourse. But can it all be taken as true ?—for complete we see it is not. What wonderful leaps we do meet with !--enough to put all England" to shame. The successes and the escapes more than rival those of Gordon Cumming. And then' what feats are done by "the natives" ! Here, in the entertaining book before us, The Young Yagers, mainly descriptive of sports in the in- terior of South Africa, is an exploit of a native hunter attending upon a Party of young sportsmen. A lioness, enraged by the loss of her mate, is close to their camp, when Congo the Kahr volun- teers to encounter her with only his assegai and his shield. "The Kaffir halted, rested his huge shield upon the ground—still hold- ing it erect—poised the assegai a moment in his right hand, and then sent it whizzing through the air. It pierced the side of the tawny brute, and bung quivering between her ribs. Only for a moment. The fierce animal doubled round upon herself, caught the shaft in her teeth, and broke it off as if it had been a straw ! The blade of the assegai still remained in the aesh, but the lioness waited no longer. She had now perceived her enemy ; and uttering a vengeful scream, she sprang towards him. With one tremendous bound she cleared three-fourths of the space that lay between them, and a second would have carried her upon the shoulders of the Kaffir : but the latter was prepared to receive her, and, as she rose to her second leap, he disappeared suddenly from the scene ! As if by magic he had vanished ; -and had not the boys been watching his every movement, they would have been at a loss to know what had become of him. But they blew that under that oval convex form, whose edges rested upon the earth, by Congo the Kaffir. There lay he like a tortoise in its shell, clutching the straps with all his might, and pressing his carapace firmly against the ground ! "The lioness was more astonished than the spectators. At the second leap she pitched right down upon the shield ; but the drum-like noise m.ac by her weight, and the hard firm substance encountered by her claws, quits disconcerted her, and springing aside she stood gazing at the odd ob- ject with looks of alarm! "

"Now, young gentleman," and sportsmen who are always young, go to the book for the conclusion of the adventure. You will find some other adventures like it, and many of a less startling Lind. The stories are varied by description, and. discussion round the camp-fire, or repose in the shade, which convey specific in- formation, or raise moot points—the existence of the unicorn, for example. The Young Yagers is undoubtedly a holiday book, whe- ther for boys, girls, or grown-up people. But it has a use, and the right way of using it is, whenever you doubt, inquire further for yourselves even if you go the whole round of South African i original literature. It s most of it very good.