discriminated, and happily combined.  The delineation of Mr. Westervelt, the father of the heroine, is especially excellent.  Irresolute in thought, impotent in will, and only occasionally fretted by circumstances into a feeble activity, he is an almost painfully accurate representation of a class of men who drift through life without any power of self-direction.  Mrs. Westervelt has equal moral feebleness with less brain, and her character is a study in practical psychology.  Somerville, the villain of the piece, who unites the disposition of Domitian to the manners of Chesterfield, is the pitiless master of this female slave.  The coquettish Mrs. Van Leer is a prominent personage of the story; and her shallow malice and pretty deviltries are most effectively represented.  She is not only a flirt in outward actions, but a flirt in soul, and her perfection in impertinence almost rises to genius.  All these characters betray patient meditation, and the author’s hold on them is rarely relaxed.  A novel evincing so much intellectual labor, written in a style of such careful elaboration, and exhibiting so much skill in the development of the story, can scarcely fail of a success commensurate with its merits.

To Cuba and Back.  A Vacation Voyage.  By R.H.  DANA, JR., Author of “Two Years before the Mast.”  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 1859. pp. 288. 16mo.

It was, perhaps, a dangerous experiment for the author of a book of the worldwide and continued popularity of “Two Years before the Mast” to dare, with that almost unparalleled success still staring him in the face, to tempt Fortune by giving to the public another book.  But long before this time, the thousands of copies that have left the shelves of the publishers have attested a success scarcely second to that of Mr. Dana’s first venture.  The elements of success, in both cases, are to be found in every page of the books themselves.  This “Vacation Voyage” has not a dull page in it.  Every reader reads it to the end.  Every paragraph has its own charm; every word is chosen with that quick instinct that seizes upon the right word to describe the matter in hand which characterizes Mr. Dana’s forensic efforts, and places him so high on the list of natural-born advocates,—­which gives him the power of eloquence at the bar, and a power scarcely less with the slower medium of the pen.  These Cuban sketches are real stereographs, and Cuba stands before you as distinct and lifelike as words can make it.  Single words, from Mr. Dana’s pen, are pregnant with great significance, and their meaning is brought out by taking a little thought, as the leaves and sticks and stones and pigmy men and women in the shady corners of the stereograph are developed into the seeming proportions of real life, when the images in the focus of the lenses of the stereoscope.  We know of no modern book of travels which gives one so vivid and fresh a picture, in many various aspects, of the external nature, the