ttish Mrs. Van Leer is
a prominent personage of the story; and her shallow malice and pretty
deviltries are most effectively represented. She is not only a flirt in
outward actions, but a flirt in soul, and her perfection in impertinence
almost rises to genius. All these characters betray patient meditation,
and the author's hold on them is rarely relaxed. A novel evincing so
much intellectual labor, written in a style of such careful elaboration,
and exhibiting so much skill in the development of the story, can
scarcely fail of a success commensurate with its merits.

_To Cuba and Back_. A Vacation Voyage. By R.H. DANA, JR., Author of "Two
Years before the Mast." Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859. pp. 288. 16mo.

It was, perhaps, a dangerous experiment for the author of a book of the
worldwide and continued popularity of "Two Years before the Mast" to
dare, with that almost unparalleled success still staring him in the
face, to tempt Fortune by giving to the public another book. But long
before this time, the thousands of copies that have left the shelves of
the publishers have attested a success scarcely second to that of Mr.
Dana's first venture. The elements of success, in both cases, are to be
found in every page of the books themselves. This "Vacation Voyage" has
not a dull page in it. Every reader reads it to the end. Every paragraph
has its own charm; every word is chosen with that quick instinct
that seizes upon the right word to describe the matter in hand which
characterizes Mr. Dana's forensic efforts, and places him so high on the
list of natural-born advocates,--which gives him the power of eloquence
at the bar, and a power scarcely less with the slower medium of the pen.
These Cuban sketches are real _stereographs_, and Cuba stands before you
as distinct and lifelike as words can make it. Single words, from Mr.
Dana's pen, are pregnant with great significance, and their meaning is
brought out by taking a little thought, as the leaves and sticks and
stones and pigmy men and women in the shady corners of the stereograph
are developed into the seeming proportions of real life, when the images
in the focus of the lenses of the stereoscope. We know of no modern book
of travels which gives one so vivid and fresh a picture, in many various
aspects, of the external nature, the people, the customs, the laws and
domestic institutions of a strange country, as does this little volume,
the off-hand product of a few day