onishing
prize-vegetables, and our fat cattle have been approvingly mentioned in
the committee's report. We have found an afternoon's reading in Mr.
Copeland's book almost as good as owning that "place in the country"
which almost all men dream of as an ideal to be realized whenever their
visionary ship comes in.

* * * * *

_High Life in New York_. By JONATHAN SLICK. Philadelphia: Peterson &
Brothers.

The advantages of a favorable introduction are very obvious. A person
who enters society fortified with eulogistic letters, giving assurance
of his trustworthiness, so far as respectability and good behavior are
concerned, is tolerably sure of a comfortable reception. But if, unable
to sustain the character his credentials ascribe to him, he immediately
begin to display bad manners, ignorance, and folly, he not only forfeits
the position to which he has gained accidental access, but also brings
discredit upon his too hasty indorser.

In literature it is not different. The collection of printed matter
which appears under the title of "High Life in New York" is accompanied
by a note, signed by the publishers, who are naturally supposed to know
something of the real value of the works they issue, in which "editors
are forewarned that it is a volume which, for downright drollery and
hearty humor, has never had its equal in the productions of any American
pen," and are otherwise admonished in various ways calculated to inspire
lofty expectations, and to fill the mind with exalted visions of coming
joy. But when it appears, on examination, that the book is as utterly
unworthy of these elaborate commendations as any book can possibly
be,--that it is from beginning to end nothing but a dead level of
stagnant verbiage, a desolate waste of dreary platitude,--the reader
cannot but regard the publishers' ardent expressions of approbation as
going quite beyond the license allowable in preliminary puffs.

"High Life in New York" represents a class of publications which has, of
late, in many ways, been set before the public with too great
liberality. The sole object seems to be to exhibit the "Yankee"
character in its traditional deformities of stupidity and
meanness,--otherwise denominated simplicity and shrewdness. Mr. Jonathan
Slick is in no respect different from the ordinary fabulous Yankee. An
illiterate clown he is, who, visiting New York, contrives by vice of
impudence, to interfere very ser