452 REVIEWS OF BOOKS. [Apeil, 



bility ; for though we extracted a hundred interesting bits, we should 

 still have to leave even unrepresented a large amount of interesting 

 matter. 



Our author is, of course, always happiest when in cities and 

 amongst men, for busy life gives the best opportunity for the display 

 of his especial genius. Yet he has a keen eye for the beauty of 

 scenery ; and when he gets away from the region of the town, he gives 

 us enticing glimpses of the country, and some very choice illustrations. 

 Two of these we reproduce by the courtesy of the publishers. He is, 

 for instance, in the South, and he says : ' When the darkness of the 

 night gave way to a most glorious sunrise, I found, looking from the 

 outside platform of the car, on which nobody is allowed to stand, and 

 where everybody persists from time to time in standing, that the 

 whole aspect of the landscape had been transformed, and that I was 

 indeed in the South. Wherever the eye turned, the horizon was 

 closed by mantling forests of Pine. The balsamic odour of the Palm 

 tree was wafted to you as the train glided along; some arboretic 

 kindred beautiful feathery tree, which has given to South Carolina her 

 proud sobriquet of the " Palmetto State," began to assert itself; and 

 Water Oak and Aspen, Gum and Cedar, Black Walnut and Persimmon, 

 Hickory and Maple, with a host more trees than my scant sylvan 

 vocabulary can enumerate, made the land glorious.' 



We would fain quote, did space permit, our author's sketch of 

 Oakland, where ' geraniums, roses, fuchsias, callas, verbenas, and 

 some tropical plants and flowers grow luxuriantly all the year round, 

 never suffering from outdoor winter exposure,' and where ' fruit trees 

 develop into bearing within a third or at the most half the time 

 required on the Atlantic coast '; but we must be content to reproduce 

 a little ' bit ' of Oakland scenery by giving the pretty engraving of 

 Lake Merritt. Finally, let us say that this admirably illustrated 

 work is in all ways interesting and clever. 



Glossary of Terms and Phrases. Edited by the Eev. H. Percy Smith, 

 M. A, of Balliol College, Oxford, Chaplain of Christ Church, Cannes. 

 London : Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. 



A DISTINCT want is admirably met in this well-printed and substantial 

 volume. Its aim is ' to bring together such words, expressions, quota- 

 tions, «&c., English or other, as are among the more uncommon in 

 current literature, and require, not for the scientific but for the 

 ordinary reader, explanations for the want of which the meaning of a 

 sentence or a paragraph, even the drift of an argument, is often 

 missed ; explanations, moreover, not to be obtained without reference 

 to, and perhaps tedious search among, a large and varied number of 



