accommodate them to the various methods of boring used by different gunmakers, and the unequal length of barrels, the object in view being to produce a cartridge that would suit all barrels of the same gauge, and this has been in a great measure, if not wholly, accomplished. The liability to ball, notwithstanding various improvements made in them, was not effectually obviated for many years, during which they were tried, and in many instances prematurely condemned, either from real defects, or from the parties not knowing how to use them. They were not brought to perfection until the year 1837. The wire-cartridges possess two principal advantages over loose shot; they are propelled with greater velocity, and thrown more evenly. A loose charge is always thrown in patches; the shots of a cartridge, as seen on a target, are comparatively equi-distant from each other. * * * * * REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _Guy Fawkes; or The Gunpowder Treason. An Historical Romance. By_ William Harrison Ainsworth, _Author of “The Tower of London,” “Jack Sheppard,” &c. Philadelphia. Lea and Blanchard._ What Mr. William Harrison Ainsworth had been doing before he wrote “Rookwood” is uncertain; but it seems to us that he made his literary _début_ with that work. It was generally commended; but we found no opportunity of perusing it. “Crichton” followed, and this we read; for our curiosity was much excited in regard to it by certain discrepancies of critical opinion. In one or two instances it was unequivocally condemned as “flat, stale and unprofitable,” although, to be sure, the critics, in these one or two instances, were men of little note. The more prevalent idea appeared to be that the book was a miracle of wit and wisdom, and that Ainsworth who wrote “Crichton,” was in fact Crichton _redivivus_. We have now before us a number of a Philadelphia Magazine for the month of April, 1840, in which the learned editor thus speaks of the work in question—“Mr. Ainsworth is a powerful writer; his ‘Crichton’ _stands at the head of the long list of English novels—unapproachable and alone_. . . . This great glory is fairly Mr. Ainsworth’s due, and in our humble opinion, _the fact is incontrovertible_.” Upon a perusal of the novel so belauded, we found it a somewhat ingenious admixture of pedantry, bombast, and rigmarole. No man ever read “Crichton” through twice. From beginning to end it is one continued abortive effort at effect. The writer keeps us in a perpetual state of preparation for something magnificent; but the something magnificent never arrives. He is always saying to the reader, directly or indirectly, “_now_, in a _very_ brief time, you shall see what you shall see!” The reader turns over the page in expectation, and meets with nothing beyond the same everlasting assurance:—another page and the same result—another and still the same—and so on to the end of the performance.