reader of Sir Rose's book will
doubt that she is rigged with curses dark. When he leaves her a cloud
seems to be lifted from his soul. Everything thereafter is delightful,
if we except the climate of San Francisco, which he abominates as windy
and extreme in its daily changes, and the social system which prevails
under Brigham Young. The "big trees" transport him; the California
stage-drivers are unapproachable in the world; the officers of the
United States army treat him with the most assiduous and unvaried
courtesy and hospitality; the ladies of both coasts of the United
States are unrivaled for beauty; and "the more one sees of America, both
of people and country, the better one likes both." He sums up in the
following climax: "Should any visit America after reading these lines,
let me advise them to pay particular attention to three subjects--_i.
e._, canvas-back ducks, terrapin and madeira. This to the uninitiated is
a hint worth remembering." The last word, we take it, refers to the wine
of that name, which we had thought was still in process of very slow
recovery from the eclipse of twenty-five years ago. The major, however,
knows wine, and speaks impartially of it. The wines of California he
damns unreservedly: the Californians themselves, he says, never drink
them.

Sir Rose Price became intimate with the brave and unfortunate Custer. He
was to have joined that officer on the expedition which terminated so
fatally. His "traps were packed" and he was ready to start, when, as he
states it, a singular train of untoward events interposed and saved his
scalp. Secretary Belknap was impeached--General Custer was summoned to
Washington and gave testimony unfavorable to the accused. General
Grant's alleged disgust thereat caused Custer to be deprived of
independent command and the power of appointing a staff. Hence _The Two
Americas_ and one scalp less at the belt of Sitting Bull.

Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall): An Autobiographical
Fragment and Biographical Notes; with Personal Sketches of
Contemporaries, Unpublished Lyrics, and Letters of Literary
Friends. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Neither the biographer nor the critic finds it easy to get a good grip
on a personal or literary career so little marked by salient features as
that of Procter. The lives of few individuals have rolled on more evenly
than his did for the round eighty years which made its term. Not of high
or of low birth, r