bitious style to the serenity of truer artistic development.

Of Mr. Monti's translation we can speak in high terms of commendation.
Success in writing a foreign language is a rare thing, and he has shown
a remarkable command of idiomatic expression. His familiarity with the
habits and proverbial phrases of his native country gives him, we
think, an advantage over any English translator, which more than
counterbalances the trifling inaccuracies of phraseology that here and
there betray the foreigner, and amount to nothing more than an accent,
which is not without its merit of piquancy. In one respect we think he
has acted with great discretion, namely, in now and then curtailing
the reflections which Guerrazzi has interpolated upon the story to
the manifest detriment of its interest and consecutiveness. If Signor
Guerrazzi should profit by these silent criticisms, it would be to his
advantage as an author.

_The Elements of Drawing; in three Letters to Beginners._ By JOHN RUSKIN.
With Illustrations drawn by the Author. 12mo. London. 1857.

The art of drawing may be called the art of learning to see,--and into
this art there is no guide to be compared with Mr. Ruskin. His own
admirable powers of sight and of expression have been cultivated by
long, patient, and laborious study.

He has learned not only how to see, but what to see, and how best to
represent what he sees. A teacher of the most advanced students of Art
and Nature, he offers himself now as a teacher of beginners; and this
little book of his contains a course of instruction admirably adapted
not only to teach drawing, but also to teach the object and end for
which it is worth while to learn to draw. "I would rather teach
drawing," says Mr. Ruskin, in his Preface, "that my pupils may learn to
love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may learn
to draw." And no one can study Mr. Ruskin's book without gaining a
profounder sense of the infinite beauty and variety of Nature, and of
the unfathomable stores of her freely lavished riches,--or without
acquiring clearer perceptions of this beauty, and of its relations to
the Divine government and order of the world.

Mr. Ruskin's book is essentially a practical one. His long experience as
teacher of drawing in the Working-Men's College has given him knowledge
of and sympathy with the perplexities and difficulties of beginners.
It is a book for children of twelve or fourteen years old; and it is
esp