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jReport on General Literature. 



record of adventure throughout well known regions, but 

 little of material value in the way of discovery ; though we 

 look forward with some expectation to the possibilities of 

 new Arctic journals, and with a flickering hope to the 

 slight chance of a future volume from Dr. Livingstone. 

 And in belle-lettres, Reade, Lever, Braddon, the Trollopes, 

 and others of the sensational school have been turning out 

 their productions in steady stream, as from a machinery 

 worked mill ; neither better or worse than anything they 

 have heretofore done, and vainly striving to compete with 

 productions of a few years before, which now for want of 

 better material are still reread, and in default of proper 

 competition in the present era are beginning to be ranked 

 as classics. 



The effect of all this stagnation is seen in the book trade 

 itself, and we notice an increased disposition in publishers 

 to supply the cravings of the mind by the translation and 

 republication of foreign authors ; making us acquainted to 

 our gratification, with a few intellects of great power, but 

 otherwise gleaning for us from fields which, in a more 

 abundant harvest of our own, we would not have looked 

 * at, and even now survey with little real relish or approbation. 

 But, inasmuch as there can hardly be abundant rubbish 

 without some grain of value being here and there found 

 lurking beneath its surface, so, in the great mass of cotem- 

 poraneous literature, even in a comparatively barren year 

 works of real merit will now and the nmake their appear- 

 ance ; and of a few of these we can make brief chronicle, 

 classing them, as far as possible, under their separate 

 departments. 



In exploration and discovery, as we have already re- 

 marked, there has not been much produced that has the 

 value of novelty, or that at all passes out of the beaten 

 track. The press has teemed with ephemeral works of mere 

 personal adventure, which bring nothing especially worthy 



