ome before us, we shall rejoice to do them justice. But we advise him,
first of all, to discard his disguise, which becomes him as ill as the
gown of Mrs. Ford's "maid's aunt, the fat woman of Brentford," did Sir
John Falstaff. Or, if he will persist in playing the part of a woman,
let him bear in mind that to be unmanly is not necessarily to be
womanly, and that it does not follow that one writes like a lady
because he does _not_ write like a gentleman.

_Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Drawing_. Designed as a Text-book for the
Mechanic, Architect, Engineer, and Surveyor. Comprising Geometrical
Projection, Mechanical, Architectural, and Topographical Drawing,
Perspective, and Isometry. Edited by W.E. WORTHEN. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. 1857.

Mr. Worthen has given us in this book a most judicious and complete
compilation of the best works on the various branches of "practical"
drawing,--having, with real thoughtfulness and knowledge of what was
needed in a handbook, condensed all the most important rules and
directions to be found in the works of MM. Le Brun and Armengaud on
geometrical and mechanical drawing, Ferguson and Garbett on
architectural, and Williams, Gillespie, Smith, and Frome, on
topographical drawing.

It includes a very full chapter of geometrical definitions, a complete
and minute description of all the implements of mechanical drawing, and
solutions of all the useful problems of geometrical drawing,--a part of
the work especially needed by practical mechanics, and hitherto to be
found, so far as we know, only in the form of results in the
pocket-books of tables, or in the lengthy and elaborate treatises of
the heavy cyclopaedias, or works specially devoted to the topic.

There is an admirably condensed treatise on the mechanical powers,
containing all the problems of use in construction, with tables of the
mechanical properties of materials. In mechanical drawing there are
directions for the most complicated drawings, going up to the last
improvements in the steam-engine. The same completeness of elementary
instruction marks the section on architectural drawing, though in this
department we should have liked a fuller and better-chosen series of
examples, especially of domestic architecture,--an Italian villa
planned by Mr. Upjohn being the only really tasteful and appropriate
dwelling-house given. The designs by Downing, rarely much more than
commodious residences with great neatness rather than artist