Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland, Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him. Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness. There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity, "sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers, transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States, Havana.