ivalry of nations, far above all
other rivalries, they have pushed development of institutions
which they received from forefathers common to us both, to a
more rapid perfection than we. Mr. Dudley Field is one of three
men who framed a constitutional law for the State of New York,
under which the courts of legal and equitable jurisdiction have
been successfully merged; the enactment has succeeded in
practical working; and the spectacle of "Equity swallowing up
Law" has been so edifying to the citizens of his State, that
three other States of the Union have resolved to enact, and
four further States have appointed conferences to deliberate
upon, a similar procedure. It is impossible--however
narrow-minded lawyers may object--that what Americans find
practicable and beneficial should be either impracticable or
disadvantageous to Englishmen."

* * * * *

A second part of the "Historical Collections of Louisiana," by B. F.
French, has been published by Mr. Putnam. It contains some interesting
papers, among which are translations of an original letter of Hernando
de Soto, on the Conquest of Florida, of a brief account of de Soto's
memorable expedition to Florida, from a recently discovered manuscript
by a writer named Biedma, and Hackluyt's translation of the longer
narrative "by a gentleman of Elvas." It is to be followed, we
understand, by a second volume.

* * * * *

ELIHU BURRITT is one of those people who are filled with the comfortable
assurance of their own greatness. He seems always to regard the mob of
men as very diminutive creatures, while his introverted glances are
through a lens which reveals a character of qualities and proportions
the most extraordinary. This is unfortunate. It renders Mr. Elihu
Burritt, _par excellence_, the bore of his generation. He is really a
person of very small abilities; of very little information, considering
the opportunities presented by his travels; and the "_learned_
blacksmith" has no learning at all. He had, indeed, an unusual facility
in acquiring words, but he knows nothing of languages; not having in any
a particle of scholarship; of the philosophy, even of his mother tongue,
being as ignorant as the bellows-hand in his smithy at Worcester. But
because of this not uncommon faculty of acquiring words--acquiring them
as Zerah Colburn did a c