supposed by most people, and almost
by himself, to have gone crazy. If anything, at this day, is more
incredible than the feat which he accomplished, it is the derision
with which the public viewed his labors, decried his success, and
sneered at the rags which betokened the honesty of his poverty. To
every one who had brains capable of logic, he had demonstrated the
feasibility of his visions. But no amount of even physical
demonstration, then possible, could bring out the funds requisite to
pecuniary profit, against the head-wind of public scorn. It whistled
down his high hopes of fortune. At last, dropping the file and the
hammer, he took the pen, determined, that, if others must get rich by
his invention, he would at least save for himself the fame of it. The
result of his literary labors was an autobiography of great frankness
and detail, extending to several hundred pages, and embracing almost
every conceivable violation of standard English orthography, with
which he seems to have had very little acquaintance or sympathy. It
was placed under seal in the Philadelphia Library, not to be opened
for thirty years. At the expiration of that period, in 1823, the seal
was broken, and the quaint old manuscript, with the stamp of honest
truth on every word, stood ready to reveal what the world is but just
beginning to "want to know" about John Fitch. He afterwards went to
Europe to promote his steamboat interests,--to little purpose,
--wandered about a few years, settled in Bardstown, Kentucky,
made a model steamboat with a brass engine, drowned disappointment in
the drink of that country, and at last departed by his own will, two
years before the close of the last century. A life so full of truth
that is stranger than fiction ought not to be treated in the
Dry-as-dust style, quite so largely as Mr. Westcott has done it.

* * * * *

_Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America_. Illustrated by
Plates and Wood-Cuts drawn from Life. By ARTHUR M. EDWARDS. New York:
1858.

This book has appeared since the notice in our July number of two
English works on the Aquarium. Like so many books by which our
literature is discredited, it is a work got up hastily to meet a
public demand, and is deficient in method, thoroughness, and accuracy.
There is much repetition in it, and the observations of its author
seem to have been limited to the waters around New York, and to have
extended over but