Charles Lamb describes his old friend, George Dyer, as purchasing a bulky volume of blank verse solely on the ground that there must be some good things in an epic of six thousand lines. On the same principle, there may be assumed to be some good sentences in this octavo of six hundred pages,--although, if so, they must lurk in some paragraph which we have unluckily missed in the reading. In the spirit of the book, however, there is a certain frankness which is a frequent merit in that class of ex-Secessionists to which this Baltimore physician apparently belongs. And as their graceful little improprieties in Virginia and elsewhere are daily making new converts to negro suffrage, so this book, by its guileless exhibition of the whole inner man of one of Mr. Buchanan's office-holders, may help to avert the resurrection of the class whom he represents. Dr. Baxley claims to have been sent in the year 1860 to the west coast of America, as Special Commissioner of the United States. What he ought to have done in that capacity is not stated; what he did is plain. He sailed along the continent upon a bubble of pro-slavery prejudice, and brought home his aërial ship intact, while all similar bubbles had burst during his absence. The book, therefore, takes us back to the good old times. Every allusion to Slavery reminds our Commissioner of joys now departed. Every glimpse of a black man in the melancholy misery of freedom recalls to him those happy scientific reveries contributed to anthropological lore by Messrs. Nott and Gliddon. He admires each dusky figure in the direct ratio of its nudity, and every added rag of civilized clothing seems to him so much subtracted from the proprieties of life. Of course a colored soldier is the climax of aggravation to his grief; and it does not even relieve his feelings, if the uniform-coat has no buttons. The author mentions the war only towards the close of the book, and of course attributes it solely to Northern fanaticism. This fanaticism he evidently supposes to have been led on by the fierce, ungovernable Muse of Professor Longfellow; for, in quoting from the "Arsenal at Springfield," that poem is described as "sung by one whose harp was then attuned to melodious measures, but whose now 'discordant noises jarrest [_sic_] the celestial harmonies' of his younger days." (Page 618.) This rather bewildering introduction of the second person singular places our voyager at disadvantage, by irresistibly suggesting that far more entertaining traveller, Artemas Ward.