3 DECEMBER 1864, Page 21

.Prealcs on the Fells, and Why I Did not Become

a Sailor. By R. M. Balltuztyne. With Illustrations. (Routledge, Warne, and Routledge.) —Mr. John Sudberry would scarcely have had a literary existence but for poor Mr. Leech's Briggs. He is a fat, sturdy little man, with spectacles, a bald head, a sanguine and energetic temperament, and a passion for fishing. He takes his family to the Highlands for the sum- mer, where his two nice sons, his nice daughter, his lackadaisical wife, and mischievous youngest son, are brought into contact with a very nice Highland laird, his equally nice sister, and a philosophical High- land farmer. From this the reader can easily conjecture the ridiculous blunders made by Mr. Sudberry as an angler, the way the family get lost on the moors, the scrapes of the youngest Pickle, the sufferings of Mrs. Sudberry, the final capture of a salmon by her husband, and the cross-marriages which conclude the story. The second tale is the account of an extravagant dream, in which the dreamer is always puzzling himself as to the strange changes which are effected around him. This is contrary to nature ; the most extravagant changes take place in a dream, a house turns into a ship, and one's grandmother becomes a bishop, without causing the least difficulty to the dreamer. How can the mind be astonished at what takes place in a world entirely of its own creation ?