Monthly Review of Literature. 539 



"As for the coarser portion of the sex, when equally depraved with their 

 more showy companions, their language, manners, and conduct, are infinitely 

 too dreadful for public description. 



" Their language, disgusting when heard even by profligate men, would pol- 

 lute the eyes cast upon it in writing. Their open and shameless vices must 

 not be told. Their fierce and untameable audacity would not be believed. 

 They are the pest and gangrene of the colonial society, a reproach to human 

 nature, and, lower than the brutes, a disgrace to all animal existence. 



" But enough. Were the veil raised, and the appalling spectacle exhibited 

 as it really is, the picture would be too horrid for affrighted humanity to look 

 upon." 



Both the works before us are well worthy of a serious perusal, and with 

 whatever partiality they may be written, they still allege facts that it would 

 be very difficult to disprove, and which are very disgraceful to Lord Glenelg 

 and his subordinates in the Colonial office. 



FICTION AND POETRY. 



Clock-maker, or Adventures of Samuel Slick, of Slickville. 

 1 vol. post 8vo. Bentley. 



This is one of the strangest and most original books that we have set eyes 

 on during this plentiful season of the London publishers. Our readers will 

 suppose that a satire]on the people of an obscure colony like Nova Scotia would 

 not excite much interest in the minds of the people belonging to the old coun- 

 try ; but it is not so. The author, whoever he is (for one half of the work 

 first appeared in the Nova Scotia newspapers), has managed, by a very clever 

 combination of broad and cutting satire with useful advice and corrective 

 hints, to form the whole into a very amusing volume. He is a person of con- 

 siderable imagination, as his rather rude but striking sketch of the Yankee 

 clockmaker abundantly testifies ; and it is impossible to read half a dozen 

 pages of the book without being amused with the rich fund of drollery and 

 dry humour which he has perfectly at his command. The provincialisms and 

 provincial allusions occasionally present difficulties to the unpractised reader j 

 but on the whole the work may be recommended, as at once the most eccen- 

 tric, most original, and most humorous little work of the present season. 



The framework of this curious satire is extremely simple. The author 

 an English tourist :in Nova Scotia is overtaken by Samuel Slick, a true 

 Yankee, with all the conceit and cunning belonging to the lower orders in the 

 Northern States of America. With this travelling pedlar the tourist falls into 

 conversation, and they feel so well pleased with each other that they mutually 

 agree on the expediency of travelling in company. Mr. Slick's originality 

 and shrewdness of criticism on the people about him, and on their various 

 practices, as elicited by the little incidents of travel, form the chief and most 

 amusing feature of the volume. Nova Scotia judicial abuses, the bad qualities 

 of the Nova Scotians railroad-schemes Canada question, and twenty 

 other subjects are introduced and treated with admirable talent and humour. 

 An extract or two is all that we have room for : but we must first thank the 

 author for having given us a very great treat from the perusal of his book. 



NOVA SCOTIA AND THE STATES. 



" This lazy fellow, Pugnose, continued the Clockmaker, that keeps this inn, 

 is going to sell off and go to the States. He says he has to work too hard 

 here ; that the markets are dull, and the winters too long ; and he guesses 

 he can live easier there ! I guess he'll find his mistake afore he's been there 

 long. Why, our country aint to be compared to this, on no account what- 

 ever : our country never made us to be the great nation we are, but we made 



