GIFT BOOKS OF THE SEASON—CONTINUED.

IN Jenning's Lawiscape Annual, Mr. ROSCOE has this year corn- pleted Spain, and entered and quitted Africa. Starting from Toledo, he revisited Madrid, returned to Salamanca, and travelled thence by Compostella, Saragossa, and Seville, to Gibraltar. From this key of the Mediterranean he crossed over to Tangiers; and having lingered there some time. proceeded to Morocco:. finding with few exceptions, that the march of liberality had reached even this hitherto benighted and bigoted region. Of the two countries described by Mr. ROSCOE, " Africa " is by far the best. In Spain he traversed ground which many had guile over before him, and over parts ot' which he himself had pre- viously travelled. Restricted, too, by the Civil War or the Cholera, his means of observation were limited to the highways ; and there is a certain ponderous and vnatter-of-fact air about our author,. which renders him dependent upon the palpable qualities of his subject for the interest which its narration possesses. A stit ring or comic adventure, a well defined character, or a topic suggestive of solid and instructive reflection, suffer nothing in the hands of Mr. ROSCOE; but his pictures of scenery are somewhat inven- torial, and he wants the vivacious buoyancy which imparts anima- tion and grace to trifles. Hence, for the reasons already alleged,. parts of " Spain " are rather heavy : but all in "jAfrica " is variol. novel, and interesting. Morecco has, indeed, been described be- fore, but not very lately ; so that it is " pasture new " for the general reader. Nor do we know that the Moors have ever yet had so unprejudiced, philosophical, and able a traveller amongst them. The Tour in Morocco in the Larriseape Annual is one of the most fresh and agreeable pieces of writing which this class of literature has produced.

Taking our extracts, however, indifferently as di .y strut% us in. reading, we begin with a fearful account of

CIVIL wart SLAUGHTERS IN seam.

Some few men, both of the Spanish awl Euglioh troop., had been surrounded and made prisoners. Among these was Andrew, and the days of the miller'. son were numbered. They were dragged forth fruits their brief imprisonment as fast as they recovered and were able to walk, to be shot by their fellow- countrymen, in pursuance of the horrible decree that compels a brother soldier to steep his hands in the blood of the unfortunate captive. It was thus felt in its nost revolting colours, when, by a refinement of cruelty in this instance,— and we heard equal atrocities averred on both sides,— the wretched men wee, commanded to tire upon each other. They were drawn foist, iu ranks, the few English and Spanish opposite toeach other ; awl the scene that followed, as described by the youthful soldier, whose features seemed to resume the expres- sion of horror they must then have exhibited, wes at once pathetic and terrible, carrying with it a stern and memorable rebuke of the ferocious policy, which tramples on the last feelings of humanity in the heart of a fallen foe. The Carlist Colonel, who gave the first order to fire, himself fell by the hand of an Englishman, whose countrymen he hail dated to think would, under the fear of death, commit so truly fratricidal au act. A groat' of indignation alone re- sponded to the eonintand : they threw away the instrumento of death, and the Carlin officer advancing, cried oat that " the English were all cowards, and quailed before the face of death." Tile foul aspersion was repelled by an Eng- lish officer in the service of Don Carlos, who, .1rawing his sword, gave the Spaniard the retort on-courteous. They decided the matter on the spot, and the Spanish Carli.t measured his length upon the ground. Such was the effect produced by this well•merited chastisement, that it wag judged inexpe- dient to pursue the wank of slaughter on the spot; and among the survivors till another day was the son of the miller, who was marched back to his old quarters. So strangely fortunate as he had thus been, visions of escape began to float before Andrew's imagination; and it was then he filet conceived the plan which he so successfully put in play. Not even a Christino soldier is consigned to death without the pious support of absolution at his last hour one of the good fathers came to administer this cool comfort to poor An- drew, the night previous to the day when the men before respited were again to confront the horrors of such a doom. But Andrew had other business in hand ; he was a lover, and Spaoish love from time immemorial has been fertile in its expedients. After coufessiug his sins, receiving absolution and conso- 'talon, which served to encourage him, just as the good father rose to retire, the desperate lover eeized, gagged, and stripped his confeseor ; and leaving him bound our to keep the peace, assumed his ghostly habiliments, and passed quite unsuspected through the guards, the Carlist eainp, the miiitary lines, the whole distance from Hernani—for who would stop a priest on a misaion of peace and love? for such it wuseetill be reached the mile at Toledo.

AFRICA.

It soon became evident that we had got into a world altogether new to us. The very character of the shore was ilmfferent from any thing we had hitherto beheld, though it would have been difficult, perhaps, to define precisely in what that difference cnnsisted. There was something, no doubt, in the peculiar vege- tation of the climate. Palm trees, with their long pendulous branches, ruse here and there upon the beach, in some places clumped into small groves, in others scattered singly ; and acacias, and other trees indigenous to Africa, olothed several points of the coast with a beautiful green. But the most remarkable portion of the scene, after all, were the figures; and those were truly original, and pressed upon the eye the moment we landed. Bedouins from the desert with their comae, Negro slaves, Jews, Moore, Arabs, in every imaginable variety of costume and colour, and grouped in the most fantastic manner.

ROSCOE'S HOUSE.TOP •DPENTURE.

One morning, a few days after our arrival, the weather being perfectly deli- cious, I was on the alert before Senor Barros, my landlord, had commenced coffee. griniling—an operation which he daily, I verily believe, pei formed before his prayers. Not precisely knowing what to do with myself, I ascended to the terraced roof, innocent of all designs against our neighbours' harems, and mean- ng nothing more than to lounge there for half an hour, until the coffee should be ready am d the pipes lighted. The day had not long dawred; but as the dawn is somewhat shorter than with us, the harbingers of sunrise soon appeared in time East : streaks of orange and crimson shooting upwards firm the verge of the horizon, followed almost immediately by a semicircular halo of violet.eoloured light, decked the sky with splendours unknown in our northern latitudes. A soft breeze, cool, refreshing, and laden with the delicious per fume of a southern spring, excited the most pleasurable sensations ; to enjoy which I strolled on from roof to roof, until I had advanced pretty far intuforbidden ground. A half-suppressed laugh recalled me to myself. Looking down into the central court from which it had proceeded, I beheld a group of women clustered round a fountain, and close beside them a corpulent ohl gentleman, who appeared to be asleep. What could have brought them them thither so early it were difficult to say. The heat of the nights was not yet sufficient to render sleeping in the open air at all plea- sant. Yet there they were; and as they made no attempt to don their veils, I enjoyed ample leisure for contemplating their beauty at my ease. They were about seven in all, dressed as if for some grand display, and several of them might be considered exceedingly pretty, with fair bosoms, welbturned arms, and lips and:eyes such as are nowhere seen but in the East. The ha.iji's wives were nothing in comparison with them; though *malting, perhaps, tray be allowed for niy seeing the former by permission, the latter by stealth. how- ever, as day laughed loud, and began to address themselves to me with a de- gree of fearlessness, perfectly astonishing among inmates of a harem, I feared they would at length awaken their Argue, whose resentment it might have been imprudent to provoke, and retreated towards my lodgings.

PROCURING AN INTERPRETER.

Before our departure fur time capital, we were exceedingly desirous of engag- ing an into peter well acquainted with English and Arabic. Mr. Treury,

Mr. Bell, and several other friends, exerted themselves, however, in vain to discover ore ; and, at length; it was suggested that the shertest way would be to make application to the governor. Our request was seconded by a handsome

present; IDOVed by which, the old gentleman hit upon an expedient often put In practice as a last resource, and sometimes productive of tragical results. He commanded four soldiers to station Os niselves at the deur of the Jewish syna-

gogues at the hour of prayer, and make inquiries among the polyglot Ilebrews for a perss,n of the requisite deseriptien. Supposing the service demanded of him might be to iuterpiet between the governor aid some rich Englishman at the castle, a Jew- petliar, who understetel all the languagis of Etilope, stepped forward, and ds clared himself properly qualified. Upou this, the poor Israelite was seized :ad hurt:e41 away to the castle, ulnae lie learned, to his utter dismay, that lie would be iequired to accompany us to Morocco.

The Oriental Annual has discontinued the " Lives of the hIoglitil Emperors." which it commenced last ear ; and re- turned to the more miscellaneous matters of talcs, manners, customs, ar.(1 economy, with which it originally began,—inter- mingled, however, with some historice-biographical information respecting the lives and reigns of HLevoox and AKBAtt, the son and grandson of BABER. Something of solidity may have been lost by this cliunge, but the character of the Annual is much better preserved by it; and more pleasure, we exl.ect, will be fur- nished to the reader. There was at least a degree of gravity and sameness in the main mutterer last ear's volume, and frequently a constraint in the introduction of subordinate parts, which (lid not well agree se ith the variety, sprightliness, and entertainment that should form the characteristics of these books of the boudoir. In addition to this, the lives of the Mogleul Emperors required a strain upon the attention, to be read with profit or even pleasure, which few readers would be inclined to give to an Annual,—and which, let us whisi-er it, that particular number of the Oriental -might not altogether have rewarded.

The plan of the present volume differs also from the first three, which filmed a species of tour, by being in fact, what all Annuals profess to be, an illustration of illustrations. The plate of the cenotaph of BABER gives occasion to a disquisition on the place of his burial; the portrait and tomb of Hu/ism/ow; usher in his life and death ; the Minar, a species of "Colosseum," gives rise to an account of the fondness of Oriental princes for field-sports; this leads to a plate of elephants fighting,

and to a very interesting description of combats of wild beasts, and native gymnastics, which the author himself has witnessed; " Ruined Palaces" introduee an account of the creatures who haunt them—snakes and robbers, with stories connected there- with; and SO on, till Mr. CAUNTER completes his allotted space, pleasantly, variously, and not uninstructively.

Of the combats of animals we could quote all, but they ex- tend over too large a space. We will therefore take those

which seem to us to throw any new light upon received opinions, or to be distinguished by any striking touches. The buffalo, in I remember once seeing, at an entertainment of this kind, three wild buf- faloes driven into the arena against an elephant. In order to render them more fierce. crackers were fastened to their tails. During the explosion of these the terrified animals ran to mei fro as if in a state of frenzy, and one of ;hem charged the elephant, which stood in a corner of the square, with the blind and misguided fury of madness. The colossal creature watched his victim as it plunged desperately fotward, calmly awaiting its approach with his head de- pressed, and the point of his tusks brought to a level with the shoulders of his advancitig foe. The buffalo rushed onward, and was almost instantly impaled; the elephant casting the writhiug body from his tusks, and then coolly crushing it with his fore-feet.

The two other buffaloes, having now somewhat recovered from the terror excited by the crackere, which had hitherto diverted their attention from the elephant, gazed wildly round the enclosure, and, seeing their enemy prepared fur a charge, pawed the ground, raising the dust, and flinging the earth over their heads in a continual shower ; then erecting their tails, with a loud roar they simulta- neously charged the elephant, which still remained in the corner where he had at that stationed hitnself. Ile e) ed them with a deliberate but keen glance, placitig his head, as before, towards the ground, and bringing those terrible in- struments of destruction with which his jaws were armed in a position to meet the elsrge of his foremost foe. The result was precisely the same av in the former attack, the buffalo being instantly transfixed upon the elephant's tusks; but before the victor could release them from their incumbranee, the second buffalo was upon him. With that quickness of thought, however, he raised his fore kg and struck his assailant between the horns, rolling it over and instantly ernshing it to death.

It sometimes, indeed, happens in these encounters, when the elephant is timid, Which is the natural character of this animal, that he is dreadfully gored by his furious assailants, to which lie idlers no resistance, but flies from them in the greatest terror. An old elephant is generally too wary and too conscious of his own streteztit to allow himself to be subdued by such inferior adversaries; and when he offers a resolute resistance the buffaloes invariably fare the worst. But at these cruel exhibitions, buivever the contest terminates, there is touch more distress than enjoyment experienced, at least by European spectators, to whom the sight of a violent death inflicted even upon animals which they natu- rally hold in dread, is, in most cases, a spectacle altogether shocking to the better feelings of humanity.

GLADIATORIAL AMUSI:31FNT.

On the occasion to which I have just referred, alaer the contest between the elephant and buffaloes, a bear was intioduced before the party ussembled to wit- 1■Vee the sports, and a man undertook to encounter it without any arms, save gauntlet made of buffalo burn, culled a jetty, arid described at length in the third volume of this work.

The bear was a large oue of its species, and had been kept without foud for two slays, in order to render it the more fierce. When lust released from its den, it paced the ground with a sullen aspect, occasionally looking up at the spectators and uttering a low dismal rear, but showed no signs of positive eau. Iteration. The moment the man entered, it paused, erected itself on its hind legs and yelled loudly. The Ilintloo was a tall powerful young Oman, with extremely long arms, a fine expansive chest, and a clear beaming eye, expressive of cool determination and wary caution. He first commenced operations by walking round his adversary, sometimes advancing, then retreating—now quiekeaiug his pace, then suddenly stopping, all the while distracting the atteutien of his angry foe by numerous contortions of body, occasionally clapping his hands, bulking his chest, and springing from the ground with an agility which would have surprised the inoet accomplished " maitre de ballet" in Europe.

His shaggy opponent at length becoming enraged, advanced upon him with a shriek of rage, and extended a paw to grasp his hip; but the Ilimluo, with the rapidity of lightening, planted a blow upon the bear's cheek, which cut open the skin, and sent Bruin staggering several paces backwaids. Tha poor animal seemed for a moment stunned with surprise, and before it could recover it received another tremendous hit on the muzzle, which caused it to turn and run to the corner of the enclosure. After shak- ing its nose and sneezing, it once more erected its body, having new its back supported by the bamboo railways. The man tried by all sett of gesticulations, suddenly retreating aud falling down, to draw his adversary from its position, but in vain. The animal was evidently aware of the advantage of

presenting to it, antagonist only one point of attack, and therefore would not budge from its corner ; but, covering its head with its large shaggy paws, the I liodno champion Mund it extreinely difficult to deliver a blow where it would be likely to be effectual. Finding that he could not rouse the bear, lie sprang forward and gave it a smart kick in the flank: this caused the annual euddeuly

the following account, seems a more dreadful antagonist than is gi.nerally supposed; and the absence of excitement in the rhino- ceros bell re the struggle, and his instant repcse after it, is a fine display of the calm consciousness of power.

Upon another ocetnion I witnessed at one of these sanguinary exhibition.,; contest between a buffalo and a tiger. The buffalo was extremely fief ee, and one of the largest of its kind I had ever seen. It commenced the attack by rushing towards its adversary, which retreated to a corner of the arena, where, finding me escape, it sprang upon the buffalo's neck, fixing its claws in the animal's shoulder, and lacerating it in a frightful manner. It was, however, almost instantly flung upon the earth with a violence that completely stunned it, whet& there appeared a ghastly wound in the belly, inflicted by its antagonist's horn, from which the bowels protruded. The conqueror now began to gore and trample upon its prostrate enemy, which it soon despatched, and then galloped round the inclosure, streaming with blood, the foam dropping from its jaws, rti, eyes glancing fire, oecasionally stopping, pawing the ground, and roaring with maddened fury.

A small rhinoceros was next introduced, which stood at the extremity of the arena, eyeing its foe with on oblique but animated glance, though without the

slightest appearance of excitement. The buffalo having described a circuit from the centre of the ground, plunged forward toward the rhinoceros, with its head to the earth, its eyes appearing as if about to start from their socket% Its wary antagonist turned to avoid the shock of this furious charge, and just grazed the flunk of the buffaio with its horn, ploughing up the skin, but doing no serious mischief. It now champed and suorted like a wild hog, and its eyee began to twinkle with evident expressions of anger. The buffalo repeated the charge, one of its horns coming in contact with its adversary's shoulder: which, however, was protected by so thick a mail that this produced no visible impression. The rhinoceros, the moment it was struck, plunged its horn with wonderful activity aud strength into the buffalo's side, crushing the ribs and penetrating to the vitals; it then lifted the gored body from the ground awl flung it to the distance of several feet, where the mangled animal almost ima mediately breathed its last. The victor remained stationary, eyeing his mo. tionlese victim with a look of stern indifference, but the door of his den being opened he trotted into it, and began munching some cakes which had bees thrown to him as a reward for his conduct in so unequal a contest.

There is something very characteristic of the elephant's saga. city in the following passage; and the repose of potter too is still brought out.

to depr,.s. its paws; in an instant the jetty was rattling on its head, with a so- aus it to yell for several F■ conds. It now lay on the earth, sith-its muzzle in the corner arid its back towards its conqueror, who, disdain- ing to strike a fallen enemy, made his a laam to the spectators with a grace peculiar to all the Eastern races, and retired from the scene of combat amidst their unanimous applause. The bear was a good deal punished; but its skull stas too hard to be cracked with the blow of a fist.

The Forget Me Not. We see that if the pum e old Annuals, the first come is the best served. They aro so alike that the de- scription of one may suffice for all; and their flavour is not of a kind that invites a second repast. What was said of the Friendship's Qffering may be said of its prototype the Forget Me Not : it has a pleasant intermixture of prose papers, und verses that scan. As re- spects comparative merit, we think the Forget Me Not the more equable, but that better papers might be selected from Friend- dup's Offering. This, however, is rather an opinion than a judgment. The point at issue is not worth the cost of a trial.