Before we proceed on our travels, let us introduce our guide. Mr Walpole is a young naval officer, and there is in most of his narrative a dashing impetuous style, which savours of his profession. In this there is a certain charm, imparting as it does an air of frank and fearless confidence in his reader's quick perception and favourable construction. There is in his writings what we would also hope is professional--a chivalrous feeling and generous sentiment, that is never obscured by a sordid thought or unworthy imputation. As he sees clearly, of course he also sees faults in men, and minds, and manners; but such discoveries are made in a tone of regret rather than of triumph; or thrown off in a strain of good-humoured satire that could not offend even its objects. His descriptive powers are graphic, and often very vivid; his humour is very original, being generally tinged with melancholy, in such sort as that of a philanthropic Jacques might be: finally, he does not fear to display a profound and manly reverence for holy things and sacred places. On the other hand, to set against all these high merits, we must confess that many faults afford some drawback to his book. It is often incoherent, and deficient in arrangement. The first volume is rather the groundwork than the accomplishment of what an author with Mr Walpole's powers and material should have effected. Most of these faults, however, may find their excuse in the circumstances under which they were composed. They smack of the tent, the boat, and the bivouac, as old wine does of the _borachio_. Whatever they may be, this work is one that will be widely read; and wherever it is read with appreciation, it will direct the interest not only to its subject, but its author: his individuality, unostentatiously and unconsciously, is impressed on every page; and his genius, however erratic, is unquestionable. The cockpit, and even the gun-room of a man-of-war, are little favourable to intellectual effort, or the habit or the love of learning which it can alone accomplish. We can therefore make greater allowances for errors in composition, and concede greater credit for the attainments in languages and general knowledge which our young author has achieved. This is perhaps still more striking in a work written by Mr Walpole three years ago, entitled _Four Years in the Pacific_, which, though written in a midshipman's berth, abounds in passages of beauty, and in his peculiar and original humour. Having said so much in his praise and dispraise, and only premising, in addition, that he speaks Arabic and Turkish, so as to interpret for himself the quaint unusual thoughts of the people among whom he lives, we enter upon a survey of what he saw.