scorn is poured upon our legislation, war, and social habits, as the absurdities of a barbarous age and people. Learned disquisitions on language, literature, and the arts suffice to show, at any rate, the accomplishments of the writer: and the tender susceptibilities of which the hero was the victim from the Vril-ya women supply a pleasant touch of humanity. The people, in short, have attained a development which is as far ahead of ours, as ours is of our anthropoid ancestors. They have penetrated the chief secrets of nature, and almost got rid of all human ills. Theirs is a paradise of physical, scientific, social, and moral perfection; wealth is disliked, power is shunned, crime is unknown, and force is unnecessary. But somehow the general result is unsatisfactory and melancholy. The book is an able and remarkable one. Much wisdom, as well as much learning, is veiled under its ingenious allegory; the _reductio ad absurdum_ is suggested with exquisite subtlety. It is one of the cleverest satires of its class. _The Songstresses of Scotland._ By SARAH TYTLER and J. L. WATSON. Strahan and Co. Notwithstanding some slight tendency in two or three of these sketches to attempt a story when there is no story to tell, this is as charming a book of its class as we remember to have read. A single ballad sometimes gives fame, as, for example, the 'Werena my Heart Licht' of Lady Grisell Baillie; but then all that we care to know about its author may be told in a paragraph. With others, however, it is different. Song-writers like Mrs. Cockburn, Lady Ann Barnard, and the Countess of Nairn, are so much more than song-writers that they amply deserve the separate biography which has already been produced of the latter, and which, we are glad to learn, is being prepared of the former. Scotch ballads, like Scotch whisky, have their own peculiar flavour, and it has a special charm for Englishmen. We should be ashamed to have to confess how many mediocre verses in poetry, and dialogues in novels, delight us simply in virtue of their Scottish dialect. There are Scotch ballads, however, that, in virtue of their intrinsic merits, will live for aye. The biographies which the industry and skill of Miss Tytler and Miss Watson have here supplied are those of Lady Grisell Baillie (1665-1746), author of 'Werena my Heart Licht,' immortal chiefly in virtue of its single refrain, 'And werena my heart licht I wad dee;' Jean Adam (1710-1765), author of 'There is nae Luck about the House,' who was a pedlar; Mrs. Cockburn (1712-1794), author of 'The Flowers of the Forest;' Miss Jean Elliot (1727-1805), author of another 'The Flowers of the Forest;' Miss Susanna Blamire (1747-1794), author of 'What ails this Heart of Mine,' and 'Ye shall walk in silk attire,' &c.; Jean Glover (1758-1801), author of 'O'er the Muir among the Heather;' Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton (1758-1816), author of 'My ain Fireside;' Lady Ann Barnard