The extracts we have given from Mr Stirling's work will have sufficiently shown the scope of the _Annals_, and the spirit and style in which they are written. There is no tedious, inflexible, though often unmanageable leading idea, or theory of art, running through these lively volumes. In the introduction, whatever is to be said on the philosophy of Spanish art is carefully collected, and the reader is thenceforward left at liberty to carry on the conclusions of the introduction with him in his perusal of the _Annals_, or to drop them at the threshold. We would, however, strongly recommend all who desire to appreciate Spanish art, never to forget that she owes all her beauty and inspiration to Spanish nature and Spanish religion. Remember this, O holyday tourist along the Andalusian coast, or more adventurous explorer of Castile and Estremadura, and you will not be disappointed with her productions. Mr Stirling has not contented himself with doing ample justice to the great painters, and slurring over the comparatively unknown artists, whose merits are in advance of their fame, but has embraced in his careful view the long line of Spanish artists who have flourished or faded in the course of nearly eight hundred years; and he has accomplished this difficult task, not in the plodding spirit of a Dryasdust, or with the curt dulness of a catalogue-monger, but with the discriminating good taste of an accomplished English gentleman, and in a style at once racy and rhetorical. There are whole pages in the _Annals_ as full of picturesque beauty as the scenes or events they describe, and of melody, as an Andalusian summer's eve; indeed, the vigorous fancy and genial humour of the author have, on some few occasions, led him to stray from those strict rules of ἀιδὼς, which we are old-fashioned enough to wish always observed. But where the charms and merits are so great, and so many, and the defects so few and so small, we may safely leave the discovery of the latter to the critical reader, and satisfy our conscience by expressing a hope that, when Mr Stirling next appears in the character of author--a period not remote, we sincerely trust--he will have discarded those few scentless flowers from his literary garden, and present us with a bouquet-- "Full of sweet buds and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie." But if he never again put pen to paper, in these annals of the artists of Spain he has given to the reading public a work which, for utility of design, patience of research, and grace of language, merits and has won the highest honours of authorship. THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED.[19] [19] _The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon._ By H. E. STRICKLAND, M.A. F.G.S., F.R.G.S., President of the Ashmolean Society, &c., and A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M.R.C. One vol., royal quarto: London, 1848.