paramount, and the honest, kindly Anglo-Saxon tongue is the language of the land, there surely needs no great effort of imagination for a Briton to think himself still at home, though a thousand leagues of ocean roll between him and his native isle. Excepting that they all more or less refer to the British possessions at the Cape of Good Hope, it were difficult to find three books more distinct from each other in character than those whose titles we have assembled at the foot of last page. An ex-settler, an accomplished lady, and a shrewd sailor, have selected the same moment for the publication of their African experiences. As in gallantry bound, we give the precedence to the lady. Mrs Harriet Ward, wife of a captain of the 91st regiment of foot, is a keen-witted, high-spirited person; and, like most of her sex when they espouse a cause, a warm partisan of the feelings and opinions of those she loves and admires. She is an uncompromising assailant of the system pursued at the Cape, especially as regards our treaties with the Kaffirs, whom she very justly denounces as perfidious, bloody, and unclean savages, untameable, she fully believes, and with whom Whig officials and negotiators have been ridiculously lenient and confiding. Although some of her views are rather sweeping and severe, she is certainly right in the main. And we honour her for her heartiness in denouncing the nauseous humbug of the pseudo-philanthropists, whose manœuvres have had a most prejudicial effect upon our South African possessions, and have given to persons in this country notions completely erroneous concerning the rights and wrongs of the Kaffir question. But whilst blaming the administration of the colony, she finds the country itself fair and excellent and of great resource. Herein she differs from her contemporary, Mr George Nicholson, junior. This gentleman, lately a settler at the Cape, cannot be too highly lauded for the volume with which he has favoured the public. We are not quite sure, however, that the public will think as highly of it as we do. Our admiration is founded on the consistency of its tone; upon the steady, well-sustained grumble kept up throughout. The preface at once prepossessed us in favour of what was to follow. Intended, doubtless, as a dram of bitters to assist in the digestion of the subsequent sour repast, it consists of general depreciation of other works regarding the Cape, and especially of one by "a Mr Chase"--of sneers at "stay-at-home wiseacres" and hollow theorists--and of a vague accusation brought against certain colonial residents of "fomenting the warlike propensities of the neighbouring barbarians, to secure their own ends," grievously to the detriment and prejudice of their fellow-colonists. "The peculiar bent," says Mr Nicholson, "of each author's mind has, in general, been so far allowed to predominate as to exclude the hope of forming a correct estimate of