and faithfully contends for their superiority to those of Niagara,
where, as he plaintively observes, "a day or two is enough," while one
could contentedly remain for months among the California wonders. He
shows, however, that his memories of Atlantic civilization are still
painfully vivid, when he counsels the beholder of the Mariposa grove to
lie on his back, and think of Trinity Church steeple. Might not one also
beguile a third day at Niagara by reflections on the Croton Aqueduct?

But these little glimpses of the author's personality make the book only
the more entertaining, and give spice to the really vast mass of
accurate information which it conveys. There are few passages which one
can call actually imaginative, unless one includes under that head the
description (page 40) of that experiment "common in the Eastern cities,"
where a man dressed in woollen, by sliding on a carpet a few steps,
accumulates enough personal electricity to light gas with his fingers.
This familiar process, it appears, is impossible in California, and so
far his descriptions of that climate convey a sense of safety. Yet even
one seasoned to such wonders as these might be startled, for a moment,
before his account of the mountain sheep (_Ovis montana_). This
ponderous animal, weighing three hundred and fifty pounds, has a
sportive habit of leaping headlong from precipices one hundred feet
high, and alighting on its horns, which, being strong and elastic, throw
him ten or fifteen feet into the air, "and the next time he alights on
his feet all right." (p. 124.) "Mountaineers assert" this; and after
this it can be hardly doubted that the products of the human
imagination, in California, are on a scale of Yo-semite magnificence.

_The American Republic: its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny._ By
O. A. BROWNSON, LL. D. New York: P. O'Shea.

Mr. Brownson's influence over the American people, which had dwindled
pretty nearly to zero at the beginning of the war, revived with that
revival of the old Adam which made him a patriot, and thus showed him
rather in the light of a heretic. This book sets him right (or wrong)
again, and his temporary partnership with "humanitarians" may be
regarded as closed by official notification. In a volume which might
well be compressed into one fourth its present size, he covers a great
deal of ground, and has pungent suggestions on both sides of a great
many questions. Even in the Preface he announces h