It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of vital importance--the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour--these volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank. And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic, medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths, temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house; one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches, gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which was fugitive--namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation," really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the baths of him, the gentlest of the Caesars, who, when he had gone to rest without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally