citus
abridged all because he knew all; and no reader can peruse a number of
this Encyclopaedia without being convinced that the success in preparing
the perspicuous abridgments it contains is due to thorough knowledge.
Its excellence is not confined, however, to the letter-press; for we are
furnished with a series of colored maps, embodying the results of
the most recent explorations, and also with a profusion of admirable
woodcuts, illustrating the subject wherever pictorial exposition may aid
the verbal. It will be recollected that no other Encyclopaedia published
in this country has the advantage of illustrations.

The character of Messrs. William and Robert Chambers of itself gives
ample assurance that the work is prepared and executed in a superior
manner; but when we superadd to this the fact that they have spared no
labor or expense, but have devoted to it all the resources of their
experience, enterprise, and skill, in order to make the work, in all its
departments, their crowning contribution to the cause of knowledge, we
are the more ready to believe that it actually is all that it claims to
be. The American edition by J.B. Lippincott & Co., of Philadelphia,
is published in numbers simultaneously with the Edinburgh and London
edition, and in an unexceptionable style of typography. Its low price
brings it within the reach of almost every reader. Indeed, when we
consider the size of the volumes, the number of illustrations and maps,
the mechanical execution, and the compensation to the writers, we are
at a loss to conceive how it can be profitably furnished at so cheap a
rate.

_The Recreations of a Country Parson_. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

The essays of which this volume is made up were originally contributed
to "Fraser's Magazine." The "Recreations" they record are therefore
those of an English, and not an American "Parson"; but there is nothing
in them which a parson of any church or denomination would feel inclined
to repudiate, on the score either of their fineness of mental perception
or healthiness of moral sense. The author tells us, that, in writing
these essays, he has not been rapt away into heroic times and distant
scenes, but has written of daily work and worry amid daily work and
worry: and herein lies the charm of his discourses. He has one of those
sensible, elastic, cheerful natures whose ideal qualities are not
perverted by fretfulness and discontent. That most wicked of Byronisms,