[3] This is an unlucky word for a cookery book. Why not say operations? Mrs. D. Mrs. D! you have not escaped the scientific mania that is mounting from area to attic throughout this country. Such a term as _manipulation_ sounds well enough in Mr. Brande's laboratory at the Royal Institution, but would be quite out of place in the kitchen of either of the hotels in the same street. A footman might as well study the polarization of light whilst cleaning the drawing-room windows. From a table of contents we learn that among them there are the following methods:-- Soups 105 Fish 115 Beef 70 Mutton 31 Veal 60 Gravies, Sauces, &c. 104 Puddings, Pies, and Tarts 263 Creams, Custards, &c. 134 Cakes and Preserves 182 --what more can mortal man desire, "nay, or women either." Appended to them is much valuable information concerning the poultry-yard, dairy, brewery, kitchen-garden, bees, pigs, &c. so as to render this _Practice of Cookery_ a truly useful and treasurable system of domestic management, and a book of matters-of-fact and experience. The subject is too melting--too tempting for us to resist paying this tribute to Mrs. Dalgairns's volume. * * * * * "CLOUDS AND SUNSHINE." An appropriate _April_ book, too controversial for extensive quotation in our pages, as the enumeration of its contents will prove. They are half-a-dozen gracefully written sketches, viz. the Gipsy Girl, Religious Offices, Enthusiasm, Romanism, Rashness, and De Lawrence. Half of these papers, as will readily be guessed from their titles, bear upon "the question," and are consequently, as the publishers say, "not in our way." We are, nevertheless, proud to aver that the sentiments of these chapters are highly honourable to the heart of the writer as they are creditable to his good taste and ability. He is, to judge from his book, a good man, one who is not so willing as the majority of us, to let his philanthropy remain "Like unscour'd armour, hung by the wall;"