Yet the moral of the book is not without value, and its historic interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good, though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo" on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible contingency,--sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test of a combat." The book was first published under the Republic, to which the author professes due loyalty. He suggests, however, that, as no one is required by duty to fall in love with a very ugly woman who may have been imposed on him in marriage, so he is not yet very much smitten with the Republic. But he is ready to respect the dame, if she proves to deserve it, as a legitimate connection. _Cape Cod._ By HENRY D. THOREAU. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. Cape Cod is photographed at last, for Thoreau has been there. Day by day, with his stout pedestrian shoes, he plodded along that level beach,--the eternal ocean on one side, and human existence reduced to its simplest elements on the other,--and he pitilessly weighing each. His mental processes never impress one with opulence and luxuriance, but rather with a certain sublime tenacity, which extracts nutriment from the most barren soil. He is therefore admirably matched against Cape Cod; and though his books on softer aspects of Nature may have a mellower charm, there is none in which the very absence of mellowness can so well pass for an added merit. No doubt there are passages which err upon the side of bareness. Cape Cod itself certainly errs that way, and so often does our author; and when they are combined, the result of desiccation is sometimes astounding. But so much the truer the picture. If Vedder's "Lair of the Sea-Serpent" had the rank verdure of the "Heart of the Andes," the kraken would still be as unimpressive on canvas as in the newspapers. No one ever dared to exhibit Cape Cod "long, and lank, and brown" enough before, and hence the value of the book. For those who insist on _chlorophylle_, is there not "Azarian"? If the dear public will tolerate neither the presence of color in a picture, nor its absence, it is hard to suit. Yet it is worth remembering, that Thoreau's one perfect poem,--and one of the most perfect in American literature,--"My life is like a stroll upon the beach," must have been suggested by Cape Cod or some kindred locality. And it is not the savage grandeur of the sea alone, but its delicate loveliness and its ever-budding life, which will be found recorded forever in some of these wondrous pages, intermixed with the statistics of fish-flakes and the annals of old men's diseases.