MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 97 



EXCITEMENT ; OR, BOOK TO INDUCE YOUNG PEOPLE TO READ. FOR 

 J835. WAUGH AND INNES, EDINBURGH. WHITTAKER, LONDON. 



THE NURSERY OFFERING FOR 1&35. 



THERE is one excellent feature about the literature of the present day, 

 and that is, th&t books are carefully got up for children. The miserable 

 affairs intended for the juveniles some fifty years ago would now excite the 

 contempt of the most diminutive urchin that has waded through a ginger- 

 bread alphabet. The two works, " Excitement" and " Nursery Offering," 

 are tolerable specimens of the best kind of children's books. They are 

 pretty-looking a thing of no slight consequence ; and the <( Offering" is filled 

 with simple explanations of many infantine queries, with which children 

 oftentimes puzzle the best and the wisest of parents. 



The selections in " Excitement" are in a general way judicious, and of 

 a lively and attractive character. We must, however, except from this 

 praise the extracts relative to Bolivar and the Venezuelan war of exter- 

 mination. Such details are better kept from the eye of unjudging inno- 

 cence, and in the way in which they are given they do not convey any 

 moral instruction, a point which ought never to be forgotten in works 

 drawn up expressly for young people. 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JACK KETCH, WITH FOURTEEN ILLUS- 

 TRATIONS FROM DESIGNS BY MEADOWS. EDWARD CHURTON. 

 LONDON. 



IF the self-recorded lives of public men are of importance to society, as 

 exemplification of difficulties surmounted on the high road to eminence, 

 then assuredly the subject of these memoirs has a claim upon the gratitude 

 of a high-spirited and intellectual people ; and in thus publishing his inte- 

 resting experience, it is certain he will not be the least in their esteem, 

 although, with some of them, it is just possible that he may be the last. 



The appearance of this volume conveys more than is superficially ap- 

 parent. Its sombre garb is typical of sorrow the gaudy label on its back 

 cannot cheat us into any other belief; it is the funereal glitter of a gilt 

 plate upon a coffin-lid. No, the fact cannot be concealed, Jack Ketch is 

 no longer what he was no longer the bustling, active functionary his 

 place is not of the value of a rope'send his occupation's gone. The school- 

 master has filched his rod, and he is now on the list with titled sinecurists, 

 and public pensioners. How, in this most unprosperous period, must his 

 recollection carry him back to the good old Tory times, when a mighty 

 slender qualification made a man eligible for " Tyburn-tree ;" when the 

 maladroit conveyance of a two-pound note made him intimate with a 

 halter ! With what an artist-like eye, on a Monday morning, must he 

 have surveyed the beam whereon some three or four of these forty- 

 shilling freeholders were cooling their heels outside the debtors' door 

 for an hour at a stretch ! Those were days of business ; Jack Ketch 

 had no time to write books then the utmost he could do was to 

 favour his friends with a line. But sessions are long that have no endings 

 the functionary's friends are again in power, and Jack Ketch may hope 

 for the results. The book is, however, a more pleasant speculation than 

 the times, and here we find the career of the author faithfully narrated 

 from his earliest infancy down to the period when he takes office, by suc- 

 ceeding his uncle to the important post of representative of the Sheriff of 

 London. Our hero first saw the light in the " darksome secresy of Rose 

 and Crown Court," and, with an independence truly original, does not 

 claim hereditary respectability, but says, " Let me not mince the matter 



JOf. No. 1. O 



