The temptations to fulsome eulogy or to exaggerated caricature are, to a writer of a book of American travels, so great and are so rarely resisted, that Mr. Rae, as a signal exception, deserves the very highest praise. His feeling to America and Americans is evidently of the kindest, and yet he has had such a wholesome fear of fulsome praise, that he has put himself under almost undue restraint--the greys predominate in his colouring. He has everywhere manifestly endeavoured to see things as they are and to describe them as he saw them; the result is a sober, judicious, intelligent book, that vouches for its own trustworthiness. Mr. Rae describes only the route across the American continent from New York to San Francisco by the Great Pacific Railway. He tells us that the basis of his book is two series of letters which appeared in the _Daily News_, revised and recast. He writes in an easy, accustomed style, as men write whose pen is the weapon with which they fight the battle of life. He has imagination enough and descriptive power enough to redeem his narrative from the dryness of a log, and he has sufficiently large and varied knowledge of the world to qualify him to form wise, practical, and genial estimates of things. Much in American life is novel and experimental, and demands in its judge no small power of constructive imagination. Much in American feeling is provincial, wayward, and almost morbidly sensitive, and needs great candour for the appreciation of its fresh, generous, and noble elements. The Americans are rapidly outgrowing some of the follies of their youth; there are still in the practical administration of politics and social economies many things--worse than follies--that belie the noble principles of their constitution, and that the warmest friends of America cannot but look upon with anxiety. The extent of administrative corruption, the unscrupulousness of party politics, not only as towards each other but as towards other nations--such passionate, undignified, and manifestly venal messages as the one just sent to Congress by President Grant for instance, with the political interpretations of which it is susceptible--render it a question of great solicitude whether these are the moral weaknesses of childhood, which experience and discipline will cure, so as to develope a nation high and courteous in political as in social and personal honour, or whether its political maturity will manifest the faithlessness and unscrupulousness which so sadly stain the escutcheons of some European nations, and which necessitate a constant and suspicious vigilance; we strongly hope in the higher developement, but the centenary of the nation's birth is near at hand, and we are longing to see a high-minded government and policy such as we do not see yet.