ation contained in this work is no recreation, but a severe task,
and one not to be accomplished except upon repeated perusals of the
book. This is the more inexcusable because M. Cousin is now free from
all official and professional cares; and it would involve the less
labor to him, as he never writes, but dictates all his compositions.

* * * * *

_Belle Brittan on a Tour; at Newport, and Here and There._ New York:
Derby & Jackson. 1858.

The compulsion of hunger, or the request of friends, was the excuse for
the printing of sorry books in Pope's time; and it has not become
obsolete yet. The writer of the book, the title of which we have given
above, pleads the latter alternative as the occasion of this
publication. He says it was "a few friends" that preferred this
request. It is unfortunate for him that he had any so void of judgment
and empty of taste. He thinks his Letters will "receive unjust
censure," as well as "undue praise." We think that he may relieve his
mind of any such apprehension. We cannot think his book at all likely
to receive more dispraise than it richly merits. A more discreditable
one, not absolutely indictable, we hope, has seldom issued from the
American press.

What motive the author had in assuming a female character, we know not.
He certainly has been very unfortunate in his female acquaintance, if
he accurately imitates their tone of thought and style of talk, in his
letters. Should they happen to fall in the way of any foreigners, we
beg them to believe that this is not the way in which American women
converse. But we think that there can scarcely be a cockney so spoony
as not to "spy a great peard under her muffler," and know that it is a
man awkwardly masquerading in women's clothes. It is a libel on the
women of the country, to put such balderdash into the mouth of one who
may be supposed to have been finished at a fifth-rate boarding-school.

The letters are in the worst style of the "Own Correspondents" of
third-rate papers. The "_deadhead_" perks itself in your face at every
turn, in flunkeyish gratitude for invitations, drinks, dinners, and
free passes,--from "the gentlemanly Lord Napier," down to "intelligent
and gentlemanly" railway-conductors, "gentlemanly and attentive"
hotel-clerks, "gracious, gentlemanly, and gallant" tavern-keepers, and
their "lovely and accomplished brides." The soul of a footman is
expressed by the pen of an abigail,--an