“‘Olympus-high above all earthly things,’

the sight of this plain, unostentatious man afforded more pleasurable feelings than could all the gilded pomp beneath the sun.”  One can fancy, if John had communicated this reflection to the Doctor, what would have been the reply of that suave practitioner.  He goes to low dance-houses, and the interesting result of his reflections on what he beheld there is, “that vice, however gilded over, is still a hideous monster; in which conviction, I resigned myself to that power that ’must delight in virtue.’” When he speaks of his billiard-pupils, he loftily denominates them “hundreds of the best gentlemen-players scattered over the earth’s surface,” from which we draw the pleasing inference that none of John Brown’s scholars are addicted to subterranean billiards.

In spite of these rags of old college-gowns, in which John so funnily arrays himself on occasions, his book is worth reading.  If it has not the muscular, unaffected morality of his namesake’s unsurpassable “School-Days at Rugby,” it is at least the production of an honest, hearty Englishman, and teaches an excellent lesson on the value of pluck and perseverance.

Colton’s Illustrated Cabinet Atlas and Descriptive Geography. Maps by G.W.  COLTON.  Text by R.S.  FISHER.  New YORK:  J.H.  Colton & Co. 4to. pp. 400.

This work meets an acknowledged want; it combines in one convenient volume most of the desirable features of the larger atlases, being full enough in detail for all ordinary purposes, without being cumbersome and costly.  It is prefaced by a clear and well-digested statement of the laws of Physical Geography, “based,” as the publishers say, “upon the excellent treatise on the same subject found in the Atlas of Milner and Petermann, recently published in London.”  The maps are one hundred and sixteen in number, admirably engraved, and, what especially enhances their value, they are draughted on easily-convertible scales,—­one inch always representing ten, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, or other number of miles readily comparable.  They include the results of the latest explorations of travellers, and the newest settlements made by the English and Americans.

The descriptions are full and accurate, and the statistics of population, trade, public and private institutions, etc., are convenient for reference.  This department is illustrated by over six hundred wood-cuts.

This Atlas may, therefore, fairly claim rank as a Cyclopaedia of Geography, and for the household and school it is one of the most useful publications of our time.  The attention now everywhere excited by proposed or impending changes in the boundary-lines of European States, by the inroads of Western civilization in the East, by the settlement of the Pacific Islands, and by the growth of empire on the western coast of our own country, renders the publication of a compendious work like this very timely.