The three introductory chapters, describing the journey to St. Petersburg, are perhaps the most brilliant portions of the book. The delineations of his fellow-passengers, in the voyage from Stettin to Cronstadt, especially the portraits of the swearing Captain Smith and the accomplished Hussian noble, are admirable equally for their humor and their sagacity. The account of the landing at Cronstadt, the scenes at the Custom-House, the author's first walk in St. Petersburg, and his first drive in a droschky, are masterpieces of familiar narration, and fairly convert the readers of his hook into companions of his journey. The description of the manners and customs of the Russian people, the shrewd occasional comments on the policy of the government, and the thorough analysis of the rascality of the Russian police, are admirable in substance, if somewhat flippant in expression. In power of holding the amused attention of the reader, equally by the pertinence of the matter and the impertinence of the tone, the volume is unexcelled by any other book on the subject of Russia. _The New Priest in Conception Bay_. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1858. 2 vols. 12mo. The southeastern portion of the island of Newfoundland, as may be seen by a glance at the map, may be well described by that expressive epithet of "nook-shotten," which in Shakspeare is applied to the mother-island of which it is a dependent. The land is indented by bays and estuaries, so that it bears the same relation to the water that the parted fingers of an outstretched hand do to the spaces of air that are between them. One of these inlets bears the name of Conception Bay; and it is around the shores of this bay that the scene of this novel is laid. Everything in it suffers a sea-change; everything is set to the music of the winds and the waves. We find ourselves among a people with whom the sea is all, and the land only an appendage to the sea,--a place to dry fish, and mend nets, and haul up boats, and caulk ships. But though the view everywhere, morally and physically, is bounded by the sea, and though one of the finest of the characters is a fisherman, yet the moving springs of the story are found in elements only accidentally connected with the sea, and by no means new to novel-writers or playwrights. The plot of the novel is taken from, or founded upon, the peculiar relations existing between the Roman Catholic priesthood and the female sex; and, with only a change in costume and scenery, the events might have taken place in Maryland, Louisiana, or France.