Some curious anecdotes are given in this volume of the corruption of members of Parliament. It is well known that during the reigns of William the Third, Anne, George I. and George II., and a portion of the reign of George III., a seat in the House of Commons was considered, by many members, as a palpable property, from which a regular income was to be derived by selling votes to the ministry in power. Sir Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, were the greatest jobbers in this political corruption; but Lord Bute, who entered office on the principle of dispensing with the purchase of Parliamentary support, carried the practice on one occasion to an extent never dreamed of by his predecessors. He discovered that the peace of 1763 could not be carried through the House without a large bribe. Mr. Francis quotes from Bute’s private secretary, a statement of the sum distributed among one hundred and twenty members. “I was myself,” says Mr. Ross Mackay, the secretary in question, “the channel through which the money passed. With my own hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes. Eighty thousand pounds were set apart for the purpose. Forty members of the House of Commons received from me a thousand pounds each. To eighty others I paid five hundred pounds a piece.” This system has been varied of late years. The mode of purchase at present is by patronage. Offices and pensions are now the price of votes. It would be impossible in a short notice to convey an idea of the variety of curious information which this book contains. To people who have money to lose, it is a regular treatise on the art of preserving wealth. Every private gentleman, smitten with a desire to speculate in stocks, should carefully study this volume before he makes the fatal investments. * * * * * _Evangeline; A Tale of Acadia. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Illustrated by forty-five engravings on Wood, from designs by Jane E. Benham, Birket Foster, and John Gilbert. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 8vo._