o even his credulity. He swallowed
easily the "exact spot" where the cradle lay, but strained at the
fragment of a column on which Mohammed is to sit when he judges the
world, and says, "I was unable to resist the temptation to straddle it!"
Perhaps the secret of Dr. Ridgaway's success is that he has omitted
those rhapsodies which are natural enough amid such scenes, but which we
get our fill of without going to Palestine. He is too full of the real
situation to turn to fanciful imaginations, and as a consequence he
gives us the best companion to the Bible which we know of. The critical
results of his journey are small, but as a careful summary of what
others have finally settled upon his work is authentic. A large number
of engravings, of the best execution, bring the landscape and buildings
vividly before us. Many of them are from Dr. Ridgaway's sketches, others
from photographs, and the only fault we have to find is the omission of
titles to them, an omission which is artistic, but inconvenient.

--Lieutenant Ruffner[16] does not give a very assuring picture of New
Mexico, considered as a possible State in our Union. It has never
prospered; its population and area of cultivated land being smaller now
than three hundred years ago. As these changes are no doubt due to the
operation of natural causes, about which scientific men do not agree,
the immediate future of the country does not appear very flattering.
Wide as the spread of westward migration has been, it has hardly
affected New Mexico. Lieutenant Ruffner says: "The line once crossed, a
foreign country is entered. Foreign faces and a foreign tongue are
encountered." For twenty-six years the Territory has formed a part of
our country, but in that time our civilization has hardly made an
impression upon it. The author, without directly saying so, seems to
regard the scheme for making it a State with disfavor, and his readers
will agree with him. He has done his country a service by this
painstaking and impartial description of a region which few but army
officers know anything about.

--It is a very difficult thing nowadays to write a book of travels that
can interest the general public. A hundred years ago a man who had
circumnavigated the world was a remarkable object, and people would
crowd to see him, and read his works with avidity. But what a change the
last century has produced. Compare the difference of tone between 1776
and 1876, and then go back and comp