tracts, throw them into the sea, and allow them to be washed ashore! This ingenious plan, adopted before Cadiz, did not answer, "first," says Mr. Hughes, who, we must do him the justice to say, is a stanch foe to humbug, "because the bottling gave a ludicrous colour to the transaction; and, secondly, for the conclusive reason, that Cadiz, being surrounded by fortified sea walls, mounted with frowning guns and sentries, the bottles never reached the inhabitants." Whilst touching on Portuguese literature, Mr. Hughes refers to what he considers the depreciating spirit of English critics. "There is a ludicrous difference," he says, "in the criticism of London and Lisbon. Every thing is condemned in the former place, and every thing hailed with rapture in the latter. There are faults on both sides." We have been informed that previous literary efforts of the author of the "Overland Journey" met, at the hands of certain reviewers, with rougher handling than they deserved. His present book is certainly not so cautiously written as to guarantee it against censure. The good that is in it, which is considerable, is defaced by triviality and bad taste. We shall not again dilate on faults to which we have already adverted, but merely advise Mr. Hughes, when next he sits down to record his rambles, to eschew flimsy and unpalatable gossip, and, bearing in mind Lord Bacon's admonition to travellers, to be "rather advised in his discourse than forward to tell stories." TO THE STETHOSCOPE "Tuba mirum spargens sonum." _Dies Irae._ [The Stethoscope, as most, probably, of our readers are aware, is a short, straight, wooden tube, shaped like a small post-horn. By means of it, the medical man can listen to the sounds which accompany the movements of the lungs and heart; and as certain murmurs accompany the healthy action of these organs, and certain others mark their diseased condition, an experienced physician can readily discover not only the extent, but also the nature of the distemper which afflicts his patient, and foretell more or less accurately the fate of the latter. The Stethoscope has long ceased to excite merely professional interest. There are few families to whom it has not proved an object of horror and the saddest remembrance, as connected with the loss of dear relatives, though it is but a revealer, not a producer of physical suffering. As an instrument on which the hopes and fears, and one may also say the destinies of mankind, so largely hang, it appears to present a fit subject for poetic treatment. How far the present attempt to carry out this idea is successful, the reader must determine.] STETHOSCOPE! thou simple tube, Clarion of the yawning tomb, Unto me thou seem'st to be A very trump of doom.