American. Fancy discovering in California a young lady in
book-muslin, the daughter of cultivated parents, who remarks under
excitement,--"Well, if this don't bang wattle-gum, I wish I may be
buried in the bush in a sheet of bark! Why, I feel all over centipedes
and copper-lizards!" Still, there may be some confusion in the dialects
used in the book, as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or
plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody
else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for
tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony
in the language of British emotion.

There is rather a want of central unity to the book, but, so far as it
has a main thread, it seems to be the self-devotion of a sister who
prefers her brother to her lover. This furnishes a pleasant change from
the recent favorite theme of ladies who prefer their lovers to their
husbands.

To this latter class of novels, based on what may be called the
centrifugal forces of wedlock, "Christian's Mistake" perhaps belongs.
Its clear and practised style is refreshing, after the comparative
crudeness of some other recent treatises on the same theme; the
characters are human, not wooden, and the whole treatment healthful and
noble.

"Uncle Silas" is the climax of the sensational, and goes as far beyond
Mrs. Wood as she beyond Miss Braddon, or she beyond reason and
comfortable daylight reading.

_The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart._ By
WILLIAM L. STONE. Albany: J. Munsell.

We well remember the interest with which, more than twenty years ago, we
heard that Mr. William L. Stone was preparing a life of Sir William
Johnson. His collection of material was very large, comprising several
thousands of original letters, besides a great mass of other papers. He
had written, however, but a small part of his work, when death put a
period to his labors, and the documents which he had gathered with such
enthusiastic industry seemed destined to remain a crude mass of
undigested material. We think it fortunate for all students of American
history, that a son, bearing his name and inheriting in the fullest
measure his capacity for the work, has undertaken its completion, partly
from affection and a sense of duty, and partly, it is evident, from a
natural aptitude.

In the whole range of American history no other personage appears so
remarkable in character and so important i