the two dollars which he once had to disgorge in New York, in payment for a ride of two miles; nor do we mourn for the numerous other dollars with which he reluctantly parted to satisfy the rapacity of hack-drivers all over the Union.  We do not thrill with indignation, when we learn that he was, on a certain occasion, swept by crinolines into the middle of Broadway.  Neither are we in any way stirred by such information as, that he, like an English lord of whom he tells, was accustomed to eat oysters every night in New York; or that he “was pervaded, permeated, steeped, and bathed in a longing desire to behold Niagara,” and that, when he beheld it, his “feelings were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering sense of Law”; or that a peddler in a railroad-car sold nine bottles of quack medicine at a dollar a bottle; or that he had eight pages of interview with a Baltimore madman, who proved his insanity by perpetually calling Mr. Mackay the “Prince of the Poets of England.”  The dreary solemnity with which these incidents are narrated renders them doubly tedious.  A flash of humor might enliven them, but we never see a spark.  Mr. Mackay’s comic stories, too, of which there are not a few, are most lamentable specimens of wit, suggesting forcibly the poppy-seeds spoken of by Mr. Pillicoddy, which are soporific in tendency, and which, if taken incessantly for a period of three weeks, produce instant death.

Mr. Mackay’s experiences were not of a startling character.  He travelled leisurely, and recorded discreetly.  His blunders on a large scale are not numerous; but of minor facts, he announces many which may be classed among the remarkable discoveries of the season.  He states that New York, New Jersey,(!) and Brooklyn form one city; that Broadway, N.Y., is decorated with elms, willows, and mountain-ashes, “drooping in green beauty”; that persons with decent coats and clean shirts in Boston may be safely put down as lecturers, Unitarian ministers, or poets; that Maryland and Virginia are one commonwealth; that eighteen months before every Presidential election, a cause of quarrel is made with England by both the principal political parties, for the purpose of securing the Irish rote; that measly pork is caused by too hasty insertion in brine after killing, and consequent rapid fermentation; that the people of the United States, unless they have travelled in Europe, are quite unable to appreciate wit. [Mr. Mackay’s wit?  If so, certainly.] These are but random pluckings from a rich blossoming.

The subject upon which the author has labored most earnestly is that of Slavery.  If the views he sets forth are the result of his own investigation, he is entitled to credit for unusual exactness.  There is nothing new about them, to be sure; but there is also nothing absurd, which is a great point.  He maintains the argument against Slavery, that it is to be practically considered in its injurious influences on the white people of the Slave States, and, through