The popularity of the author of these delightful volumes is indicated by the rapid sale of the first edition, which was disposed of on the day of publication. The work will add to Taylor’s reputation in respect to every quality of mind and disposition for which he is deservedly distinguished. It so combines the observer with the poet, that the reader soon becomes the author’s companion, seeing what he sees and feeling what he feels. His descriptions of scenery are beautiful representations; a few quiet and magical sentences bring pictures right before the eye; and when his subject happens to be the vegetation of the tropics, he gives us not only foliage but fragrance. The whole book is pervaded by that genial and happy spirit, which lends fascination to all of Taylor’s writings, and converts his readers into friendly partisans. We have not space at present to indicate the stores of information and delight which the volumes contain, but will extract one paragraph on a Pacific sunset, as a specimen of the ease with which the author’s facile style rises to eloquence. “Why,” he exclaims, “has never a word been said or sung about sunset on the Pacific? No where on this earth can one be overvaulted with such a glory of colors. The sky, with a ground-hue of rose toward the west, and purple toward the east, is mottled and flecked over all its surface with light clouds, running through every shade of crimson, amber, violet, and russet-gold. There is no dead duskiness opposite the sunken sun; the whole vast shell of firmament glows with an equal radiance, reduplicating its hues on the glassy sea, so that we seem floating in a hollow sphere of prismatic crystal. The cloud-strata, at different heights in the air, take different coloring; through bars of burning carmine one may look on the soft, rose-purple folds of an inner curtain, and, far within and beyond that, on the clear amber-green of the immaculate sky. As the light diminishes, these radiant vapors sink and gather into flaming pyramids, between whose pinnacles the serene depth of air is of that fathomless violet-green which we see in the skies of Titian.” * * * * * _The Life and Religion of Mohammed, as Contained in the Sheeãh Traditions of the Hyât-ul-Kuloob. Translated from the Persian. By Rev. James L. Merrick, Eleven Years Missionary to the Persians. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 8vo._