Finally, the disappointed gold-seeker addresses to his readers a parting hint, apprehensive, seemingly, of their supposing that his own ill-success has warped his judgment, or induced him to calumniate the country. "If you think," he says, "we have not shown you enough of _the elephant_, but got on the wrong way and slid off backwards, please to mount him and take a view for yourself." By which metaphorical phrase, if the worthy Johnson means that we are to go to the diggings, and judge for ourselves, we can only say we had much rather take his word than his advice, and read his book by our fireside than tread in his footsteps amongst the mountains of California. Without further comment, but with a warm recommendation, we close these three American volumes. It were idle to subject to minute criticism books that make no pretensions to literary merit, and which, professing only to give, in plain language, an account of the writers' personal adventures and experiences, are written in off-hand style, and are wholly free from pedantry and affectation. If they are occasionally somewhat rude in form, like the men and countries they portray, they at least are frank and honest in substance; and they contain more novelty, amusement, and information, than are to be found in any dozen of those vapid narratives of fashionable tourists with which the Bentley and Colburn presses annually cram the nauseated public. We have been much pleased and diverted by the unsophisticated pages of Messrs Johnson, Wise, and Parkman. HOWARD.[9] [9] _John Howard and the Prison-World of Europe._ From original and authentic Documents. By HEPWORTH DIXON. To add another to the numerous eulogies which have been justly bestowed on the memory of Howard the philanthropist, is not our object. We are far from making the attempt: our aim is to contribute something to the more accurate and familiar knowledge of the man himself--his life, his character, his career, his services.