This book has appeared since the notice in our July number of two English works on the Aquarium.  Like so many books by which our literature is discredited, it is a work got up hastily to meet a public demand, and is deficient in method, thoroughness, and accuracy.  There is much repetition in it, and the observations of its author seem to have been limited to the waters around New York, and to have extended over but a short period.  In spite of these and other minor defects, it may be recommended as containing much useful information for those just beginning an aquarium and forming an acquaintance with the sea.

We trust that a misprint in our former notice has not brought disappointment to any of our readers, by leading them to expose their aquaria to too much sunshine; for the sunshine should be “not enough” (and not, as it was printed, “hot enough”) “to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air.”

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The Exiles of Florida:  or the Crimes committed by our Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws.  By JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.  Columbus, Ohio:  Follett, Foster, & Co. 1858.

A cruel story this, Mr. Giddings tells us.  Too cruel, but too true.  It is full of pathetic and tragic interest, and melts and stirs the heart at once with pity for the sufferers, and with anger, that sins not, at their mean and ruthless oppressors.  Every American citizen should read it; for it is an indictment which recites crimes which have been committed in his name, perpetrated by troops and officials in his service, and all done at his expense.  The whole nation is responsible at the bar of the world and before the tribunal of posterity for these atrocities, devised by members of its Cabinet and its Congress, directed by its Presidents, and executed by its armies and its courts.  The cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, which make the pen of Motley glow as with fire as he tells them, the dragonnades which scorched over the fairest regions of France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have a certain excuse, as being instigated by a sincere, though misguided religious zeal.  For Philip II. and Louis XIV. had, at least, a fanatical belief that they were doing God service by those holocausts of his children; while no motive inspired these massacres, tortures, and banishments, but the most sordid rapacity and avarice, the lowest and basest passions of the human breast.

And so carefully has the truth of this story been covered up with lies, that, probably, very few indeed of the people of the Free States have any just idea of the origin, character, and purposes of the Seminole Wars, or of the character of the race against which they were waged.  And yet there is no episode in American history more full of romantic interest, of heroic struggles, and of moving griefs.  We