urists, as it is perfectly unique in its way. It also
merits the study of English politicians. This island rock is the
Gibraltar of the North Sea. With a few companies of infantry and
casemated batteries, it might be held against any force, and it commands
the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe. The Heligolanders are not
Germans,--ethnology perhaps would rather class them with the Danes,--and
they have no German sympathies. There can be no excuse, therefore, for
giving up the island to Prussia, as has been seriously recommended in an
English journal; though the objection to this--that by so doing England
might lose _prestige_ upon the Continent--is a groundless fear: at the
present moment she has none to lose.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Early and Late Papers, hitherto uncollected._ By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
THACKERAY. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.

It appears to us that the graceful art of Thackeray was never more
happily employed than in the first paper of this series. The "Memorials
of Gormandizing" is a record of thrilling interest, and every good
dinner described has the effect upon the reader of a felicitous drama.
He goes from course to course, as from act to act of the play; he is
agonized with suspense concerning the fate of the dishes, as if they
were so many heroes and heroines; if the steak is not justly cooked, it
shall give him almost as great heart-break as a disappointment of
lovers; when all is fortunately ended, he takes a long breath, as when
the curtain falls upon the picture of the united young people, the
relenting uncle, and the baffled villain. As good as a novel? There are
mighty few novels that have so much of life and human nature in them as
that simple and affecting history, given in this book, of a dinner at
the Cafe de Foy, in Paris. But they make one hungry with an inappeasable
appetite, these "Memorials of Gormandizing," bringing to mind all the
beautiful dinners eaten in Latin countries, and filling the heart with
longing for the hotels that look out on the Louvre at Paris, the Villa
Reale at Naples, the Venetian sunsets, the Arno at Florence, and even
for the railway restaurants which so enchantingly diversify the flat,
monotonous, and desolate Flemish landscape.

We travel with Mr. Titmarsh to Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, through the
latter region, and we enjoy every one of those "Roadside Sketches," so
delicate, so unerring, and so suggestive. Thackeray is a delightful
travelle