at
white, honeyed, trailing sweetness which summer insects haunt and the
Spirit of the Universe loves. The defect is not in language, but in men.
There is no conceivable beauty of blossom so beautiful as words--none so
graceful, none so perfumed. It is possible to dream of combinations of
syllables so delicious that all the dawning and decay of summer cannot
rival their perfection, nor winter's stainless white and azure match
their purity and their charm. To write them, were it possible, would be
to take rank with nature; nor is there any other method, even by music,
for human art to reach so high.'

To this very height of human art has Mr. Higginson, in the article from
which the above is a quotation, himself attained!

IN THE TROPICS. By a Settler in Santo Domingo. With an Introductory
Notice by RICHARD B. KIMBALL, Author of 'St. Leger,' 'Undercurrents,'
&c. Carleton, publisher. 1863.

A 'Settler in Santo Domingo' has given us a good book--a fresh,
wholesome, and evidently truthful narrative of his every-day experience
in the tropics. It is a book eminently _sui generis_, reminding one of
Robinson Crusoe or Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast.' There is a gentle
earnestness, a mild yet positive concentration of purpose about it, that
enlists our sympathies from the start. The young farmer's mind is on his
work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca
patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is
a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and
twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough
and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his
window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung
across the savanna: he takes the hint, and hurries out to look after his
young plantains. At night the sea keeps up its everlasting chant by the
side of his _palenca_, and the pure stars watch over his humble roof;
yet, unconscious of both, he sleeps on the calm deep sleep appointed as
the best recompense of honest toil.

The author of 'In the Tropics' is a young man born and reared on a farm
in the interior of the State of New York, who was afterward condemned to
what seemed to him the perpetual servitude of a clerk's life in the
city. Weary and heart-sick he yearns for a better existence. Not little
Nell beseeching her grandfather to leave the dark rooms and melancholy
houses of her abhorrence, and