neat and convenient volume, has condensed a mass of important information on all the subjects which merchants and travellers have most at heart to investigate.

The relative duties and rights of masters, mates and seamen, ship-owners, insurers, factors and passengers; together with the revenue and navigation laws, the law regu lating fisheries, importations, salvage, bottomry and respondentia-are here laid down in a clear and concise manner, accompanied by copious references. This work also contains an incredible mass of purely mercantile information, embracing a digest of all laws that control the drawing, acceptance and protest of bills of exchange,-statistics on the currency, weights and measures, and commercial regulations of almost every nation of the earth-and an abstract of the pilot laws and harbor regulations of every maritime State in the Union. If we add, that this volume likewise offers a copy of our last tariff, extracts from the tariffs of other nations and a dictionary of sea-terms; together with precise and practical directions in regard to the clearing and entering of vessels, and many other items of special or general usefulness, we may well state, that while it must be considered the indispensable vade mecum of all merchants, owners and masters of ships, it is likewise essential to the traveller; and that, as a book of reference, to the mere student or casual reader, it will prove a perfect cyclopedia, nay, an entire library of useful information.

Although three preceding editions of this work had made it eminently popular, so great and important are the changes lately introduced in the commercial laws of our own and other nations; so rapidly is the great system of jurisprudence, called the law of nations, absorbing all local enactments, and tending to establish a universal code in all countries, that this, the fourth edition, is really an entirely new work. Much credit is due to its learned author, for sifting the various and fluctuating enactments of our state governments, which, in the absence of sufficient federal legislation, have passed, without system or concord, a vast number of laws, hastily framed, and as often suggested by the whims of ignorant petitioners, as by the real necessity of sudden emergencies.

10.-ACTON; Or, THE CIRCLE OF LIFE: a collection of thoughts and observations, designed to delineate Life, Man and the World. D. Appleton & Co., Broadway.

This is a beautiful volume, well adapted for the season of presents. It is elegantly embellished with Parisian illuminated cuts, and the matter is every way of a desirable character. The author informs us in his preface, that the articles were written, some of them, in all quarters of the world. They are philosophical conclusions apparently of an observing mind, enjoying great opportunities for the exercise of a clear judgment. The accuracy of his views on many subjects will be recognized by many, in the late defeat of the democratic party, through the influence of Mr. Van Buren and his long-tail of desperate and briefless young lawyers, in the truth of the following aphorism :

Lawyers and Doctors. Physicians without practice are quiet and harmless; but lawyers without it, are restless, and doubly armed to do mischief.

11.-UNIVERSITY SERMONS, delivered in the chapel of Brown University. By Francis Wayland, President of the University. Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, Boston.

Professor Wayland is well and familiarly known to the public as an author in many departments, and this volume is a welcome addition to theological literature, from the same eminent source.

12.-THE FORGERY: a Tale. By G. P. R. James, Esq. Harper Brothers.

The prolific pen of Mr. James does not appear to play either in the quantity or interest of the matter it furnishes to the public. This is not among the least interesting of his popular romances.

13.-MODEL MEN AND WOMEN. Harper Brothers.

These are very amusing hits at the every-day foibles of most classes of people that make up the population of great cities; very many of the allusions are however applicable only to London society.

14. THE YOUNG PATROON; OR, A CHRISTMAS IN 1690. A Tale of New-York; by the author of the First of the Knickerbockers: George P. Putnam, 155 Broadway.

This is a very agreeable and presentable tale of New-York, peculiarly so at this season, and will be appreciated as being associated with those charms of ancient Manhattan, raised by the magic pen of Irving, and endeared to Americans as well as the degenerate sons of the sturdy New-Amsterdams. It is got up in Putnam's peculiarly grateful style.

15.-SCOTT'S REPUBLICATIONS.

The British Quarterlies, furnished by Messrs. L. Scott & Co., are always fraught with high interest--not that their teachings are such as suit, for the most part, our republican tastes, but they keep readers well " posted up" in regard to events, and there is too much American intelligence to be misled by monarchial sophistries; and the Westminster is always an offset to the toryism of the London, and the fairness of the Edinburgh modifies to some extent the supercilious aristocracy of Blackwood.

16.-BERFORD'S WORLD AS IT MOVES.

The second number of this highly interesting weekly is before us. It is a new enterprize of the publisher, and every way qualified to command attention. In addition to much original matter of high character, it presents the best selections from the leading European journals, Italian, French, German and English, and is published at the low rate of five dollars per annum.

17.-THE OAK OPENINGS, OR THE BEE HUNTER. By J. F. Cooper. Burgess, Stringer & Co., New-York.

We gave, in a former number, a short review of this work. We now again take it up for the purpose of expressing what we consider an error in etymology. When novelists choose to turn lexicographers, they should beware of lightly entertaining crude opinions and fancies in relation to the origin of words. We have no objection to the pedantry of the book-worm so long as it is backed by real learning. But the assumption without the merit of research or scholarship, is to us particularly obnoxious and offensive. Mr. Cooper undertakes to trace the etymology of the well-known American word "shanty" to the Canadian expression "chieute," signifying, as he tells us, a kennel. We doubted the accuracy of this derivation; we knew of no such word as "chiente" in the French language, and its creation by the Canadians appeared to us anomalous and strangely at variance with those aualogies which govern, or should govern. the invention of new words. Distrusting, however, our own opinion, we wrote to a friend who resides in Canada, and this is his answer.

66

Cooper's known genius for fiction has not failed him in tracing the derivation of "shanty." At least I have questioned many Canadians here, and cannot find that they have any word at all corresponding to the English kennel. I don't believe in fact that there is a dog kennel in Canada, or if there is one, they call it a cabin. A shanty means in this country a place for making timber, getting out logs, &c.; and the French word for it is chantier. A Canadian does not know what you mean by chiente or even chenil; but that is not remarkable as they don't speak French."

Without endorsing entirely the statement of our Canadian correspondent, we would here express an opinion that "shanty comes from the French chantier; in fact, the two words are pronounced almost exactly in the same way.

18.-ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. By Edwin P. Whipple. D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway.

Inasmuch as that the works of English essayists have been collected and given to the world in complete volumes, it seems to have been deemed expedient to do the same by Mr. Whipple's writings in the North American Review and elsewhere, and two very presentable volumes are the result, containing the opinions of Mr. Whipple upon various literary matters and men; but these opinions are seldom sustained by argument or authorities, and oftener guided by prejudice than judgment. His thoughts seem to be far more taken up with English writers than with those of his own country, prompted, doubtless, by a sickly and absurd desire to be "noticed abroad" rather than to merit notice at home. The volumes nevertheless contain much that is interesting.

19. RHYMES OF TRAVEL; Ballads and Poems. By Bayard Taylor, author of Views A-foot. George P. Putnam, 155 Broadway.

With Mr. Taylor's Views A-foot, the public are well and favorably acquainted; and this first venture, as he informs us in a poetical way, will doubtless meet with the favor they merit. With two of the poems in the present collection, viz.: "The Norseman's Ride" and "Upwards," published in the latter part of 1846, the readers of this Review are already acquainted. They were received favorably as of considerable merit, giving promise of much genius. The little volume has a portrait of the author in his travelling dress.

Industrial Exchanges and Social Remedies, with a Consideration of Taxation. By David Parish Ba hydt, author of Letters from Europe. 2dLabor and other Capital, the Rights of Each Secured, and the Wrongs of both Eradicated. By Edward Kellogg. 3d-Essays on the Progress of Nations in productive industry, &c. By Ezra C. Seaman.

II. THE FRENCH TARIFF AND THE DUKE OF HARCOURT..

BY HENRY WIKOFF.

ΡΔΟΒ

99

...110

III. THE WEDDING IN THE GATE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS......... 123 IV. TO VIRGIL.-(TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE.)..

V. ROBESPIERRE..

VI. AMERICAN HISTORY.....

A Pictorial History of America; embracing both the Northern and Southern Portions of the New World. By S. G. Goodrich. Illustrated with more than three hundred Engravings.

128

129

151

VII. TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE.-THE POET TO HIS LYRE....... ..162

VIII. PROPHECIES FOR THE PAST....

.163

BY EUGENE LIES.

IX. AWAKE THEE, AWAKE................

.175

X. MINNA VON BARNHELM.-A COMEDY, IN FIVE ACTS..
Translated from the German of G. E. Lessing.

...176

...180

XI. FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW...

XII. GOSSIP OF THE MONTH...

XIII. NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS....

. 185

.138

It is worthy of remark, that nearly all the books published in the United States upon Political Economy, or its several branches and collateral issues, are on the monarchical side of the question, inculcating individual dependence upon government aid in all the active pursuits of life. A large majority are by mere theorists, who have apparently imbibed a superficial notion of the subject which they attempt to handle from English authors, and this dependence upon English ideas is a lingering remnant of our colonial condition. Happily, however, the nature of our institutions, the circumstances attending the first settlements of the country, the character of the people, and of their relations through a long colonial servitude to the mother country, all conspired to foster a determined, self-reliant independence, entirely at variance with the theory of government supervision of individual concerns. The great evil which besets the people of Europe at this moment exists in the fact, that the centralization of the government has been carried to such perfection, that the chief executive interferes with the most minute transactions of village economy In Europe all the enterprise of the people receives its impulse from the central head. Those few and unimportant branches of industry which the goverment can "protect" by conferring monopolies, maintain a sickly existence, without energy and without progress. Those occupations which embrace four-fifths of the people, and for which government can do nothing, but which are the victims of the protection granted to others, languish in hopeless misery. The large majority of the agriculturists of France, and some of those of the British Islands, use at this day implements that were common to the

* Industrial Exchanges and Social Remedies, with a consideration of Taxation. By David Parish Barhydt, author of Letters from Europe. George P. Putnam.

2d-Labor and other Capital; the rights of each secured, and the wrongs of both eradicated. By Edward Kellogg.

3d.-Essays on the Progress of Nations in Productive Industry, &c. By Ezra C. Sea

man.