MONTHLY IIKVIEW OF J.ITKR ATUUK AND ART. 11 5 



rally be concluded that there are a few not ouite relevant to the simple 

 question in point, which, after all, appears to us to be left pretty much in 

 the same situation as the author found it. All that he attempts to prove is, 

 what part belongs to the one and what to the other. We may be told that 

 this is all he has undertaken, but if so, he should have relinquished the 

 task altogether, than proceeded upon mere inferential probability. 



LIBRARY OF ROMANCE. THE SLAVE KING. LONDON : SMITH, 

 ELDER, AND Co. 



THIS story is taken from the Bug-Jargal of Victor Hugo, and a more 

 powerful or interesting one we never read. The design, too, is good that of 

 making the white man turn with abhorrence from the slavery of his brother 

 and fellow-creature the black, and the execution is worthy of the design. 

 The principal character, Bug-Jargal, is drawn with the force and originality 

 of a master-hand ; making allowance for some sublime extravagancies, we 

 do not hesitate to call it one of the most splendid conceptions which the 

 history of romance affords. The translator has evidently caught the spirit of 

 his original ; for there are many portions of the novel too essentially French, 

 and in this instance too superior to English, to be mistaken. The language, 

 which is mostly dramatic, is in parts singularly terse and beautiful. ; and in 

 all of the dialogues where Bug-Jargal takes a part, replete with a dignity 

 and pathos equally heroic and sublime. In fine, this is one of those few 

 romances which we can recommend to our readers, who, we shall remark, 

 will find a considerable portion of information, as well as entertainment, in 

 the notes relative to the slave trade. We should not be critics if we had no 

 objection to find. We cannot but condemn the long and tedious description 

 of the ceremonies which take place at the war council held by the black 

 chief Biassou ; and the scene which follows his command to one of three 

 prisoners to stab the other two, is equally harrowing and repulsive. 



TWELVE MAXIMS ON SWIMMING. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE CIGAR." 



LONDON -. TILT. 



A PIGMY Elzevir, gorgeously clad in gold and crimson the art of swim- 

 ming enshrined in a gilt and carved cherry-stone ! The author in his preface, 

 insists on the importance of making the rising generation a generation of dol- 

 phins. "In a country like this," he observes, " surrounded as it is by water, and 

 intersected from almost every point of its circumference, by streams, natural 

 or artificial, we ought to be almost amphibious the art of Swimming should 

 form one of the primary elements of our national education. But the very 

 reverse of this is the case. Swimming is not encouraged it is vehemently 

 interdicted to our boys, and the consequence is, that no people on the face of 

 the earth, approximate to great waters, are so impotent in the liquid element 

 as the English. Parents, in this country, entertain a perfect horror of the 

 water first, because they, themselves, cannot swim, arid secondly, on account 

 of the immense numbers of accidental deaths annually recorded by drown- 

 ing. But in prohibiting their boys from getting into the water, they act from 

 feeling and prejudice their inhibition is not based upon reason. The num- 

 ber of persons drowned will always be in exact ratio with that of those who 

 in their youth have not been allowed to attain a knowledge of the art of 

 Swimming. The parent acts without forethought, who prevents his child 

 from acquiring this art because the chances are full ten thousand to one in 

 his favour, that, during his noviciate, no accident will occur to him ; while 

 there is at least the same odds, if, in after life, he happen to be plunged into 

 deep water, against his being rescued. How many fine young fellows, the 

 pride-of their families how many men in the vigour of life, husbands and 

 fathers, have been drowned in comparative puddles, which a child who 



