la the ene #ye. Ilia wins iť a smpasei Engisi s jjdics, what wou vera y American anchors: Tes jera, nopt *** videning the fires wer which Amedez tooka must jumpe read in Engam.” The men of Irving might have indeed the sad #malay it on Later American viies in A kah, wo paxaro “Manganer The fact is accurious than £meriaa Wmv We ven more than kitty represented in the Engüsü. On woment of the use of copyright-law, the number A cheap reprints of worka lamel from the presses of New* York, Pilladelynila, and Boaton, has been so great, that we might rather complain of a prejudice in favour of the works of Willis, Longfellow, Hawthons, and other Americans. In fact, *nch has been the prominence of their names on our railway-book stalls and the counters of provincial cheap booksellers, that a foreigner, judging by appearances, might conclude that England, for its current literature, depended on America! It would be uses to say more of a mere absurdity, deserving notice only as A specimen of many random assertions made by travellers.

In several short papers, originally published in his own newspaper, and afterwards collected and reprinted under the odd title Hurrygrophs, Mr Willis undertakes the duties of arbiter elegantiorum in American society. Of the faithfulness of his sketches, or the justice of his strictures on fashions and manners, we do not profess to be able to give an opinion. The writer asserts that, after all the criticism called forth by his sketches of English society, not a single incorrectness has ever been proved, or even charged upon them. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that his accounts of life in New York must be accurate, at least with regard to certain classes.

We pass over many criticisms and eulogies on musical artists and lecturers, and can find little to say in commendation of tho tales Ernest Clay, Edith Linsey, Lady Rachel, and others

included in the writer's miscellanies. His best qualities are seen in his descriptive passages; and it appears probable that, if he had concentrated on a well-selected task the attention which has been engaged upon a wide range of miscellaneous topics, he might have fulfilled the promise made in one of his prefaces. As an example of his quiet and more accurate style of description, we select the following passage from Pencillings by the Way:

THE CLIMATES OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA COMPARED.

'It is almost a matter of course to decry the climate of England. The English writers themselves talk of suicidal months; and it is the only country where part of the livery of a mounted groom is his master's great-coat, strapped about his waist. It is certainly a damp climate, and the sun shines less in England than in most other countries. But to persons of full habit, this moisture in the air is extremely agreeable; and the high condition of all animals in England, from man downward, proves its healthfulness. A stranger who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, will at first find a gloom in the gray light so characteristic of an English atmosphere; but this soon wears off, and he finds a compensation, as far as the eye is concerned, in the exquisite softness of the verdure, and the deep and enduring brightness of the foliage. The effect of this moisture on the skin is singularly grateful. The pores become accustomed to a healthy action, which is unknown in other countries; and the bloom by which an English complexion is known all over the world, is the index of an activity in this important part of the system, which, when first experienced, is almost like a new sensation. The transition to a dry climate such as ours, deteriorates the condition and quality of the skin, and produces a feeling, if I may so express it, like that of being glazed. It is a common remark in England, that an officer's wife and daughters follow his regiment to Canada at the expense of their complexions; and it is a well-known fact, that the bloom of female beauty is, in our country, painfully

evanescent.

The climate of America is in many points very different from that of France and Great Britain. In the middle and northern states, it is a dry, invigorating, and bracing climate, in which a strong man may do more work than in almost any other, and which makes continual exercise, or occupation of some sort, absolutely necessary. With the exception of the "Indian summer," and here and there a day scattered through the spring and the hot months, there is no weather tempered so finely, that one would think of passing the day in merely enjoying it, and life is passed by those who have the misfortune to be idle, in continual and active dread of the elements. The cold is so acrid, and the heat so sultry, and the changes from one to the other are so violent, that no enjoyment can be depended upon out of doors, and no system of clothing or protection is good for a day together. He who has full occupation for head and hand

-as by far the greatest majority of our countrymen have-may live as long in America as in any portion of the globe-vide the bills of mortality. He whose spirits lean upon the temperature of the wind, or whose nerves require a genial and constant atmosphere, may find more favourable climes; and the habits and delicate constitutions of scholars, and people of sedentary pursuits generally, in the United States, prove the truth of the observation.

The habit of regular exercise in the open air, which is found to be so salutary in England, is scarcely possible in America. It is said, and said truly, of the first, that there is no day in the year when a lady may not ride comfortably on horseback; but with us the extremes of heat and cold, and the tempestuous character of our snows and rains, totally forbid to a delicate person anything like regularity in exercise. The consequence is, that the habit rarely exists; and the high and glowing health so common in England, and consequent, no doubt, upon the equable character of the climate in some measure, is with us sufficiently rare to excite remark. "Very Englishlooking!" is a common phrase, and means very healthy-looking. Still, our people last; and though I should define the English climate as the one in which the human frame is in the highest condition, I should say of America, that it is the one in which you could get the most work out of it.'

As specimens of livelier and more fanciful sketches, we might select, if our space would permit, the papers on several interesting localities in America. A sketch of the promontory of Nahant is one of the best; but here, on the shore of the Atlantic, the writer places himself in the foreground, and makes the description serve as an introduction to the tale of a quarrel about a ‘hair-brush.' A passage from the account of a visit to Niagara may be quoted, as it is characteristic of the writer, and will at least explain, if it does not justify, our censures :

NIAGARA.

'As I came nearer the Fall, a feeling of disappointment came over me. I had imagined Niagara a vast body of water descending as if from the clouds. The approach to most falls is from below, and we get an idea of them as of rivers pitching down to the plain from the brow of a hill or mountain. Niagara River, on the contrary, comes out from Lake Erie through a flat plain. The top of the cascade is ten feet, perhaps, below the level of the country around-consequently invisible from any considerable distance. You walk to the bank of a broad and rapid river, and look over the edge of a rock, where the outlet flood of an inland sea seems to have broken through the crust of the earth, and, by its mere weight, plunged with an awful leap into an immeasurable and resounding abyss. It seems to strike and thunder upon the very centre of the

world, and the ground beneath your feet quivers with the shock till you feel unsafe upon it.

Other disappointment than this I cannot conceive at Niagara. It is a spectacle so awful, so beyond the scope and power of every other phenomenon in the world, that I think people who are disappointed there, mistake the incapacity of their own conception for the want of grandeur in the scene.

The "hell of waters" below needs but a little red ochre to outPhlegethon Phlegethon. I can imagine the surprise of the gentle element, after sleeping away a se'nnight of moonlight in the peaceful bosom of Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a coil! A Mediterranean sea-gull, which had tossed out the whole of a January in the infernal "yeast" of the Archipelago (was I not all but wrecked every day between Troy and Malta in a score of successive hurricanes?)—I say, the most weather-beaten of sea-birds would look twice before he ventured upon the roaring caldron below Niagara. It is astonishing to see how far the descending mass is driven under the surface of the stream. As far down towards Lake Ontario as the eye can reach, the immense volumes of water rise like huge monsters to the light, boiling and flashing out in rings of foam, with an appearance of rage and anger that I have seen in no other cataract in the world.

"A nice fall, as an Englishman would say, my dear Job."

"Awful!"

Halleck, the American poet-a better one never strung pearls" -has written some admirable verses on Niagara, describing its effect on the different individuals of a mixed party, among whom was a tailor. The sea of incident that has broken over me in the years of travel, has washed out of my memory all but the two lines descriptive of its impression upon Snip :

"The tailor made one single note

'Gods! what a place to sponge a coat!'"

"Shall we go to breakfast, Job?"

"How slowly and solemnly they drop into the abysm!"

All

It was not an original remark of Mr Smith's. Nothing is so surprising to the observer, as the extraordinary deliberateness with which the waters of Niagara take their tremendous plunge. hurry, and foam, and fret, till they reach the smooth limit of the curve, and then the laws of gravitation seem suspended; and, like Cæsar, they pause, and determine, since it is inevitable, to take the death-leap with becoming dignity.

"Shall we go to breakfast, Job?" I was obliged to raise my voice, to be heard, to a pitch rather exhausting to an empty stomach. His eyes remained fixed upon the shifting rainbows bending and vanishing in the spray. There was no moving him, and I gave in for another five minutes.

"Do you think it probable, Job, that the waters of Niagara strike on the axis of the world?"

No answer.

"Job!"
"What?"

"Do you think his majesty's half of the cataract is finer than

ours ?"

"Much."

"For water, merely, perhaps. But look at the delicious verdure on the American shore, the glorious trees, the massed foliage, the luxuriant growth even to the very rim of the ravine! By Jove! it seems to me things grow better in a republic. Did you ever see a more barren and scraggy shore than the one you stand upon ?"

"How exquisitely," said Job soliloquising, “that small green island divides the Fall! What a rock it must be founded on, not to have been washed away in the ages that these waters have split against it!"

"I'll lay you a bet it is washed away before the year two thousand -payable in any currency with which we may then be conversant." "Don't trifle."

"With time, or geology, do you mean? Isn't it perfectly clear, from the looks of that ravine, that Niagara has backed up all the way from Lake Ontario? These rocks are not adamant, and the very precipice you stand on has cracked, and looks ready for the plunge. It must gradually wear back to Lake Erie, and then there will be a sweep I should like to live long enough to see. instantaneous junction of two seas, with a difference of two hundred feet in their levels, will be a spectacle-eh, Job?”

"Tremendous !"

The

"Do you intend to wait and see it, or will you come to breakfast?" He was immovable. I left him on the rock, went up to the hotel, and ordered mutton-chops and coffee; and when they were on the table, gave two of the waiters a dollar each to bring him up nolens volens. He arrived in a great rage, but with a good appetite; and we finished our breakfast just in time to meet Miss stepped, like Aurora, from her chamber.'

as she

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

The author of The House of the Seven Gables, and other tales and romances, is a native of the dull old town of Salem, in Massachusetts, so famous for its witchery in the days of Cotton Mather. Hawthorne, in one of his prefaces, seems to ascribe to the traditions of his birthplace a certain influence on his own imagination. Of the incidents of his life, we have little to record. He graduated in 1825 at Bowdoin College, in Maine, and soon afterwards began to write tales and sketches, which appeared in periodicals, but failed to attract general notice. Several of these early writings are included in the two volumes of Twice-told