The book might at least give some novel facts about the working of the missionary system in the South Sea Islands,--inasmuch as a wrathful and foolish observer will often spy out single facts which a more moderate partisan would omit,--but that he unfortunately takes the whole thing for granted and observes nothing. It has been more than suspected that there is a little bigotry mingled with our missionary system; but Dr. Baxley adds nothing to our knowledge on this point, preferring to rest his case on the general proposition, that there was also some degree of bigotry among the Puritan ancestors of these same missionaries two centuries ago. This fact will hardly be questioned, but it is a poor substitute for a little information as to contemporary matters. In favorable moments, the style of this book has the glow, the affluence, and the fine vein of poetical quotation, that may be found in our most eloquent real-estate advertisements. At other times there is a tendency to ponderous and polysyllabic phrases, tempting the unwary critic to characterize them in words as long. Thus, on the voyage: "The more pretentious passengers, the upper-ten of the cabin, are wonderfully characterized by quantitative propensity, while the omnivorous nature of man is illustrated by them still more strikingly.... The art of gastronomy is clearly in the ascendant.... Vegetables in season and out of season, the hebdomadal occupants of the ship's hold, some, doubtless, the forestallers' residuum, withered, wilted, and decaying;... pickles, pastry, puddings, and pecan, duly decorated with those dernier resorts of the dinner-table, almonds, raisins, and filberts, which generally prove alike first in the order of morbid causation, and first in that of retroversive result." (p. 20.) For sea-sickness the author advises "resort to the ship's surgeon," which seems a sort of pill at second hand; but he further counsels that "a person's customary dose of laudanum, morphine, chlorodine, or prussic acid may be resorted to." This is really unsafe, considering the suicidal propensities usually found among sea-sick people; and it would be safer, perhaps, to recommend to those _in extremis_ the perusal of this book, as a milder narcotic. _Life and Times of Marcus Tullius Cicero._ By WILLIAM FORSYTH, M. A., Q. C., Author of "History of Trial by Jury," etc. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.