tributed to the common delight, and turned on, with a sudden touch, the great wit-fountain never that he was held up as a butt of scorn for the arrows of an irrepressible and universal laugh! When he was quitting London for Yorkshire, the absent and eccentric Lord DUDLEY said to him: 'You have been laughing at me constantly, SYDNEY, for the last seven years, and yet in all that time you never said a single thing to me that I wished unsaid.' He remarks: 'This, I confess, pleased me.' Doubtless rare heart and head! A wit, and yet more beloved than feared!' Beside the memoir, we have in these delightful volumes 'a copious selection from SYDNEY SMITH'S correspondence, edited by Mrs. AUSTIN, to whose taste and cultivation the readers of English are already deeply indebted for her translations and riffaciamentos of continental literature. The work has been prepared, accordingly, under the most favorable conditions for success. A large portion of it is occupied with the brilliant sayings which flashed from the tongue of SYDNEY as naturally as lightning from the summer cloud. His domestic life is charmingly portrayed. Often placed in incongruous and embarrassing circumstances, he never loses his genial humor, his gayety of spirit, or his innate kindness of heart. As a model of a stamp of character rarely met with; of the sincere, frank, generous, brave, high-souled English gentleman; he exercises an irresistible attraction over the reader, and compels him to follow every detail of his biography with delighted interest. The correspondence is both rich and racy, and, as a specimen of pure, idiomatic English, has no rival.' It would have added much to the interest of the reader, if the volumes could have been accompanied by a good portrait of their noble-looking subject.

LAND, LABOR, AND GOLD: OR, Two YEARS IN VICTORIA: with Visits to Sydney and VAN DIEMAN'S Land. By WILLIAM HOWITT. In two volumes: pp. 867. Boston: TICKNOR AND FIELDS.

HERE is another work from a 'Land of Gold,' but a very different production from one elsewhere noticed in this department of our Magazine. It would have had a better title in 'The Loud Grumble of a Disappointed GoldSeeker' than any other which could have been selected. Talk of the American's love for the 'almighty dollar' as our trans-Atlantic neighbors may, such a work as the one before us proves that the coin is not less a 'sentiment' with our neighbors than with ourselves. An eye to the 'main chance,' a sensitiveness to over-charges, and a general 'cuteness in pecuniary matters, are as apparent in Mr. HowITT's narrative as they could be in any similar record of the shrewdest Yankee who ever peddled tin-ware' and things.' However, in fairness let us state the author's avowed object in writing this work: namely, to place his reader as much as possible in his own position while engaged in accumulating the matériel for his pages; to let him see, feel and draw his conclusions as fully and fairly as he did himself. 'I found myself,' he says, 'in one of the most noble dependencies of England; in a country which must one day become a great and prosperous one, (but not as a 'de

pendency,' Mr. HOWITT-mark that!) and that at a crisis unexampled in history; new, strange, and without an exact precedent.' Without reference to personal considerations, and with no purpose to serve save a patriotic one,' he claims to have 'stated simply, fully, and without fear or favor,' what fell under his notice. Mr. HowITT,' says an English contemporary, 'is a professed book-maker: but in this case he has had ample material, having passed a couple of years in Victoria, and paid visits to Sydney and to VAN DIEMAN'S Land. The result is two volumes, narrating in very simple language his own daily experiences in the rough-and-tumble life to which he gave himself up. The picture that he draws of demoralization and discomfort at the famous Gold-Diggings and elsewhere, during the time when all the VICTORIA Colony was in a high state of gold-fever, is revolting in the extreme; but we do not believe that it is over-colored for the purpose of effect. Mr. HowITT's testimony has been confirmed by every unprejudiced traveller; an they must be pretty thick-skinned adventurers who, after going through it, can still yearn for the vicissitudes of a miner's life. The Colonial Administration comes in for a large share of blame; the fatality of bungling seems to cleave to it. At the same time, it is right to add that Mr. HOWITT foresees a magnificent future for Australia, so vast are its resources, and so numerous its local advantages.' The volumes are very handsomely executed.

THE ANNALS OF SAN-FRANCISCO: containing a Summary of the History of the First Discovery, Settlement, Progress, and Present Condition of CALIFORNIA. BY FRANK SOULE, JOHN H. GIBSON, M.D., and JAMES NISBET. New-York, San-Francisco, and London: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

THIS most superb volume, of over eight hundred pages, although elaborate and minute as a history, has all the interest of a romance. It is not only full and clear upon all important matters connected with California proper, but it contains a complete history of the important events connected with Its Great City, and embraces beside interesting biographical memoirs of not a few of its prominent citizens. The manner of the work shows the pride which Californians (and why not the citizens of our common country?) have in the wonderful expositions of the book. It is beautifully printed, in a large, clear type, upon paper of the finest color and texture, and is illustrated by no less a number than one hundred and fifty fine engravings! It is evident that no pains or expense whatever have been spared to make it a complete, faithful, and valuable history of a State and city, whose singular rise, rapid progress, and unrivalled growth have been the wonder of the world. What a different State and city are California and San-Francisco from what they are at present, when we received the first number of the first newspaper ever printed in that region, and which now lies before us a little dingy sheet, called Californian,' published at Monterey, August 15 1846-only nine years ago!-by an old correspondent, WALTER COLTON and SEMPLE! Look through the text and the engravings of the work under notice, and mark the regular growth of the State and the 'Great City,' and

see if there has ever been any thing like it in the country's history. It is well observed in the preface: 'It is not necessary to offer a reason for the appearance of these 'Annals.' To read and to know something of the history of this new Tadmor, which has grown up so suddenly in the midst of what was but recently merely a desert, the centre of that vast trade which the golden smile of California opened at once to the world, is so natural and inevitable a desire, that it may be taken for granted, and dismissed as a foregone conclusion.' Exactly; so it may: and the great success which this work is sure to achieve, will prove the soundness of the assumption. We observe throughout traces of the facile hand of Mr, SOULE, who is master of a style at once graceful, graphic and simple. Our readers have already been made aware of our high estimation of Mr. SOULE as a poet; and our opinion of his talents is confirmed and strengthened by all which we have since encountered from his seldom-idle pen; he being one among the more prominent of the daily journalists of San-Francisco. We commend especially to the reader, as embodying a series of very forcible word-pictures, the accounts of the mixed multitudes that thronged into the city; the proceedings of the celebrated 'Vigilance Committee,' in punishing and putting to death the villains and murderers who infested the State; and the sketches of 'Life in the Mines.' Yet where all is so well done, and of such general interest, it seems scarcely necessary to call attention to any particular portions of the volume. This department, for the present month, was almost entirely filled when we received this superb volume, which must be our excuse, as it is our regret, that our inadequate notice of it is unaccompanied by extracts, for which it offers so many almost irresistible temptations. We congratulate the authors and the public upon the result of their labors. We hope, and do not doubt, that they have 'writ their 'Annals' true;' so that, aside from its present interest, as a most stirring narrative of events, it will have an abiding value as a reliable and faithful History of California.

THE NEWCOMES: MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY. Edited by Arthur PENDENNIS, Esq. In two volumes: pp. 418. New-York: HARPER And Brothers. We did not find the requisite opportunity for the perfect enjoyment of this intensely interesting work, while it was passing, in chapters, through the successive numbers of 'Harper's Magazine;' but since its completion, and publication in the two well-filled, well-printed, and well-illustrated volumes before us, we have read it seriatim: and we find our impressions of its characteristic excellences so well conveyed by a brother-journalist—it may be 'G. R.' or it may be 'HOWADJI,' (in their capacity of critics, par nobile fratrum) — that we gladly avail ourselves of the following well-digested 'exposition:'

'THE work is, in fact, a vast picture-gallery of representative characters, and it is necessary to comprehend them in their mutual relations before we can gain a satisfactory view of their respective individualities, and the vigor and naturalness of their portraitures. The story, though possessing sufficient interest to make the fortune of half-a-dozen common novels, is subordinate to the

moral anatomy and delineation, which is the favorite employment of the author. We follow the progress of the plot with keen anxiety to know what the fates have reserved for our new acquaintances; but our way is constantly beguiled by the rich and curious exhibitions of character, for which the events of the story merely furnish the stage. In this respect, The NEWCOMES' preserves the stamp of THACKERAY's former productions. It repeats the same processes, the same motives, the same machinery, if not the same characters, with which we are familiar in 'Vanity Fair' and 'Pendennis.' Less a work of fiction than a representation of real life, it fights a manful battle with the pretension, intrigue, and hypocrisy of modern society, dealing the stoutest blows against the follies and the frauds both of the fashionable and the financial world. But in this work, more, perhaps, than in any of THACKERAY'S writings, his sharp dissection of social weaknesses is tempered with a vein of noble humanity; and if he never weakly extenuates' the errors which it is his duty to expose, he certainly cannot be charged with setting down ‘aught in malice.'

His most caustic satire, although searching the diseased points of society to the quick, is free from ill-nature. He never gloats over vice with the morbid appetite of the cynic; nor does he find in the faults of others any materials for Pharisaic self-complacency. The judicial calmness with which he brings hollow pretences to light is remarkable. Without passion or excitement, he fixes his terrible eyes on the false, the base, the artificial, and reproduces their repulsive features in his faithful descriptions. Equally free from maudlin tenderness, from ferocious joy in human failings, and from an inflated sense of personal superiority, he takes his stand in the midst of realities, and seizes the peculiar traits of the grand living panorama before him. He does not undertake to write the natural history of angels. The enchantments of an ideal paradise are not in his line. He has no fancy for clothing men and women with a higher degree of excellence than is found in the ordinary experience of human beings. His characters are not taken from the realms of fancy or fairy-land. He prefers finding them in the general London society of the present day.

'His men, accordingly, are not heroes, nor his women paragons. Hence his pictures are an illustration of the effect of existing social institutions. He shows the weak spots in the church, the school, the family relations, the arrangements of trade, and the intercourse of society; and with the more power, as he aims at no set moral lesson, has no taste for ideal speculations, and rarely ascends to the region of general principles. Instead of this, he frequently indulges in a strain of half-serious, half-jocular moralizing, which, blending its quiet music with the general action of the piece, gives it a deeper tone, and a richer and more earnest suggestiveness. With this exception, "The NEWCOMES' is almost entirely confined to descriptive narrative. The author clearly has no intention of writing a romance. His materials are furnished less by imagination than by experi

ence.

'The leading characters, if without prototypes in our own knowledge, are such true illustrations of human weakness and passion, that we can scarcely regard them as merely personages of the author's invention. Crowded as the scene before us is with complicated events and various actors, they all preserve their identity with wonderful exactness, and each presents a study of pe cullar interest, though in many instances brought in by the gratuitous generosity of the writer, without being essential to the development of the plot.' . . In point of literary execution, as well as of moral tendency, 'The NEWCOMES' is not inferior to the most successful of the works which have crowned the author with such an unrivalled reputation as a purely intellectual novelist.

"The hand of THACKERAY is impressed on every page. Who but this consummate master has such command of the sources both of pathos and humor? Who has combined such true delicacy perception with such honest manliness of feeling? Who has passages of such profound tenderness alternating with such bursts of bitter scorn? What writer of fiction enforces a healthier moral tone, awakens a deeper detestation of worldliness and hypocrisy, or inspires a warmer love for genuine, unaffected worth?'

An elaborate analysis of the story and its plot, or a consideration of the various characters who figure therein, would scarcely find what the Germans call once-readers' while the work itself is extant and accessible. It will be bought largely and read widely.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SEEING THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY.'. - We know not when we have encountered a sketch more ludicrously maudlin than the following. It outBURTONS BURTON in 'The Toodles,' and staggers, like a kindred picture of our Georgia friend, 'S. U.,' published some years since in the KNICKERBOCKER;

'A QUIET dinner at the GIRARD House, with a couple of bottles of champagne, allayed by a cup of coffee and a regalia. The long summer afternoon was growing shorter. 'Suppose,' said JIM B 'we visit the 'Cademy 'f Natchral Sci'nces.'

'Ready,' we replied, and a cloudy omnibus, filled with misty people, rolled us somewhere very smoothly. We had to get out of that omnibus: we walked a little ways: remember mounting some very steep stairs.

"Here we are 'mong the d-denizens of the past,' said B -. 'Oh! what great jaws they've got! S'pose they came to life, what 'd you do then?' he continued, as we stopped before some ante-deluge monsters.

'Think we told him we'd call the police.'

''Just look at these pickled snakes! Wake snakes! S'pose they came to life, what 'd you do th-then?' quoth B steadying himself against the side of the

gallery.

"Holla fire!'

"""T would n't do,' said B -: 'they'd crawl all round your p-pantaloons, and get into your hat, and —— '

'Here our patience gave out.

'JIM B

-,' said we, 'do n't go on that way:

consider a man's feelings.'

"So I do,' says he: 'they'd be awful! Stop!' says he: 'that p-polar bear winked at me. I saw him. S'pose now he was to come to life!'

'This last was too much for our humanities. We walked along one of the galleries, toward an open window. We wanted fresh air.

"J-just look at those skulls: Chippeway, Choctaw, Ch-chinese, Cherokee, Egypgyptian. S'pose they'd come to life, what 'd you ·

'Here we reached the window; a breath of air came timely in, and we winked and blinked over a case of humming-birds, till B murmured: 'Suppose

"Now do n't,' said we: what's the use? Aint they all d-dead and d-stoppedup?-no, stuffed, we mean.'

''W-well,' said he, 'I w-was n't goin' to s'pose they were 'live: only g-going to s'pose we sit down on the floor here: there are no chairs. What th-then? Let's sit down.'

'And down we sat. No unruly police told us to move on; the janitor could n't see us no visitors were about. We went to sleep.