parishioners to terms. That fine cathedral with its facing of marble, was built after the model of St. Peters; and in the square before the Court-House, is one of those rare compositions in the shape of fountains, which would do honor to the best of Italy, so exquisite is its design. MOZART was born in this town, and his statue stands on a place called especially after his name; while not far off, in another street, is the mansion of the renowned naturalist PARACELSUS.

"One of the most agreeable excursions in the vicinity, is that to Berchtesgarten. Soon after leaving town, your road passes under the brow of the Unterburgs, which is famed for its statuary marble, and continues on the side of the river Arles to Berchtesgarten, the summer residence of the King of Bavaria, which is beautifully lodged at the foot of the snow-clad Wattzmann.

"One can scarcely imagine a more charming succession of landscapes than those thus presented; so full of plctorial subjects, such outlines of noble mountains, so powerful to awake the most fervent and thrilling sensations of loveliness and beauty, and so happily terminated by the bold shore of the 'Koenig Sea,' the most beautiful point in all this rich and glowing scenery. Grand are its effects, as it is hemmed in by high towering cliffs, which brood over its surface, and give to its waves a tone of pleasing melancholy. Its waters are of the darkest green, and where the overhanging rocks overshadow its lake, their color is almost black. At times, the hills slope down covered with foliage of dark pines to its edge, and again at the sudden turns of the lake, bold perpendicular walls rise so abruptly from its level as to leave no margin, and you seem as if shut in at the bottom of a basaltic well. The royal hunting lodge lies at the base of the frowning Wattzmann, and is resorted to for the chamois, and for its trout. Some of these fishes are so remarkable, that their portraits are taken and hung up in frames round the walls of this palace.

"Such are the natural beauties of this singular sea, and with such rich materials, it would require no strain of fancy to transform that blue-eyed girl who rows you over, into another 'Lady of the Lake,' or to frame a heroine out of the charming little KELLNERIN' who waits on you, on your return to the village inn.'

"THENCE by various stages our author posted to Vienna, where the writer of this notice had the pleasure of first meeting him; where, in that spider-web sort of a city, with its green belt of glacis, and palatial suburbs, modern presumption or court flatterers profess to enshrine, in the paltry deerepitude of Austrian monarchy, a successor to the illimitable genius and vast power of the mediaval lord of Europe, CHARLEMAGNE. Could he now arise from his tomb of ages, and walk the earth like Denmark's royal ghost, he would laugh to scorn the paltry patch-work of despotic imbecility, which under high sounding titles demands the abject submission of the best and freest hearts of Europe. However, Vienna is a gay place; the German's Paradise; and we spent weeks together there in its delightful galleries, libraries, collections, and palaces, frequently seeing the magnificent pomp of that court, and mutually struck by the consummate political knavery visible even in the countenance of METTERNICH, and in all his acts; listened so often to STRAUSS, and watched the happy people swinging in the polka, rejoiced over its charming cuisine, and went away together from the 'Gulden Launee,' sure that we were better pleased with Vienna than with any other city of middle Europe. Our friend forgets his usual courtesy by not returning the real kindness that we received from our admirable representative there, Mr. STILES, a gentleman who deserves and has won golden opinions from all parties. And then we voyaged on the Mississsippi of Europe, its mighty artery, the majestic Danube, all the way from Vienna, till by one of its twelve huge mouths we sailed out upon the Black Sea - the stormy Euxine. Here was an odder jumble than we had on board the steamer ; and our author does full justice to the amours of the frolicsome Princess with the handsome Count, the free-making grisette, the bridal party, and every thing else of interest on board, while he gives us living descriptions of what we saw and enjoyed on shore. But we suffered some perils of the sea; for as BYRON says:

"THERE's not a sea the traveller e'er pukes in,
Throws up such ugly billows as the Euxine.'

We tossed a day or two upon its stormy waves, when we came to the Simplegades, floating in the blue waters at the gate of that pathway of enchantment, the Bosphorus. The most exalted descriptions can never enable a reader fully to realize such beauty; but our author gives perhaps as good a description of the scene as can be conveyed by an unpractised pen:

"THE opening scene of the Bosphorus is grand. You enter these straits where the protruding shores of two opposite continents look down upon the dark and abrupt mass of the rocks Simplegades,' which full the rough and stormy waves of the Euxine into calm repose. That bold coast, bristling with Saracenic towers and mounted with heavy cannon, is soon succeeded by the overhanging heights of Belgrade, which are crowned by the ruins of an ancient aqueduct, and followed by gentler undulating hills, which enclose the dark waters of that channel within the charming bay of Buyukadere. Your sail from this point, and even for twenty miles, embraces a succession of charming landscapes and views of unrivalled beauty; and as you pass through the narrowing straits at the outlet of the bay, you glance back on the lofty summits of the Asiatic shore, and over the terraced slopes of those banks, glowing in all the richness of oriental foliage, and basking in all the fervor of bright sunshine and reflected sea.

"Wildly runs its current within the now approaching headlands of two opposite continents, as its waters chafe the base of the castle of Europe; while dark cypresses and umbrella pines mournfully look down over the ruins of this dismantled fortress, and across the stream rise the bolder outlines of Asia's stronghold, which guards the soft vales of the valley Goksû and those beautiful sweet waters of VOL. XXXV.

5

the sunny South. You do not fail to observe the rich contrast of these woody heights, as they deck both margins with varied beauty. On one side thick masses of northern forest cluster around the villas which dot the hill-side, and hanging gardens fall from parapet and terrace, clothing these decliyities in all varieties of shade and verdure. On the other shore the softer skies of the orient relieve luxuriant pastures of a lovelier green, and the gay foliage of tropical fruit and flower; while the air is redolent with sweet fragrance of jessamine and orange, wafted by Zephyr through groves of rhododendrons and acacias.

"There is a magical effect in the increasing and moving loveliness of these scenes, and the landscape warms with interest as you are borne onward in your approach to the city. All is now life and animation. Caïques of every size, holding in their prows bouquets of fresh flowers, propitiatory offerings to the waves, and brilliant with the gaudy colors of the richly-costumed passengers, move upon the surface of those waters; and long flocks of wild-fowl hurry by, skimming over the dancing billows, in perpetual motion, doomed, in the legends of the Turks, to hover, like evil spirits, without rest forever! The shores are now lined with the dwellings of Armenian and Turk, Frank and Jew, each distinguished by their peculiar colors of red, yellow and white; beyond are the palaces of the resident ministers and grandees; all following to fill up that harmonious whole which enchants the sight, until the ALADDIN-palace of the Sultan fronts upon the bay, whence you are allured by a succession of beautiful views to the very entrance of the Porte. Truly, there is no such approach to any other city in the world; such a mosaic of rich palaces and landscape, charming scenery and lovely skies! such a combination of effects, such rich contrasts and variety of moving pictures!

This mingling of beauties, this extravagance in the lavished gifts of nature, forms but a part of the wonders of the land, and unites with the Bosphorus, its castles and towers, bays and inlets, hills and forests, villas and villages, sunny prospects and delightful vales, mosques and minarets, summer palaces and kiosks, fountains and baths, to frame in unison a whole which, with the suburbs and environs, coast scenery and seas, claims for Stamboul preeminently above all of earth's cities. its reputation and its name of the Sublime Porte.''

'Constantinople, which stands as it were a great forest of gardens, palaces, mosques, towers and minarets, sprang out of this beautiful sea, an ALADDIN creation, a realized enchantment, girdled on its lofty promontory by the beautiful crescent of the Golden Horn on the one side, the smooth Sea of Marmora on the other, and the Bosphorus in front, over whose circle of waters the gilded caïques shoot innumerable, like fire-flies; that vast city, where dwell over a million of souls who call MOHAMMED the prophet of GoD; which has been the great gathering-place for all the nations of the East from the days of CONSTANTINE to its present monarch, ABDUL MESCHID; that great city, 'thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art the merchant of the people for many isles,' who can hope fully to give thy picture in words, or reproduce the impressions of those who have had the happiness of visiting thee? We spent weeks together there, endeavoring to obtain a full impression of its oriental splendor; we disregarded all the annoyances which the traveller every where meets with in those countries, and went about it and around it in all directions, and the eye never wearied with its transcendant beauty, and the mind could never fully embody and bring down to the decaying monuments around us that glorious panorama of historical associations which cluster there from the days of the lavish splendors of CONSTANTINE and the Roman Emperors till the slumbers of their Greek successors were roused by that general tocsin of Europe, the Crusades; and then its terrific sieges of ancient and mediæval time, unto the hour when OTHMAN spread forth the blood-red banner of the Prophet and claimed this queen of cities as the heritage of the Faithful.

"Our author gives us an interesting description of Constantinople, and of its beauty, as we beheld it, in perfectly halcyon weather. He has conveyed, in a brief compass, an admirable outline of almost every thing there. The writer left him at that city, and his book concludes its pleasant story by landing him in Alexandria.'

THE POETICAL WRITINGS OF FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD. In one volume, illustrated. A. HART, Late CAREY AND HART,' Philadelphia.

If this superb volume were less beautiful than it is, and were its internal attractions less in keeping with its external, we should lament, even more than we now do, that it did not reach us in season for a more extended notice. But the book is itself its own praise, and does not need our poor encomiums. The numerous engravings on steel are of the first order, and the same may be affirmed of the paper, printing and binding. As for the poems themselves, we content ourselves with adopting the words of an esteemed contemporary: 'Mrs. OSGOOD is the most naturally and unconsciously graceful female poet this country has produced, She is the most fanciful of all our female poets, and her fancy, brilliant, gay and sportive as it is, finds its only home in the sweet affections and lovely charities of a heart full at once of innocence and truth. Her poems seem the mere breathings, the successive respirations, of her soul. No one can read them without deep and unmingled pleasure.' As a holi day gift-book the volume will have few rivals in popular favor.'

POEMS AND PROSE-WRITINGS. BY RICHARD HENRY DANA. In two volumes. pp. 883. NewYork: BAKER AND SCRIBNER.

THE American public will heartily thank the enterprising publishers of these attractive volumes for putting them forth at this time, for they were very generally demanded. The first of the present volumes includes all that was in the former edition of the author's poems and prose-writings, with the addition to the poems of a few short pieces, and that edition contained all that was in the small volume of poems published several years before. Both editions had been for some time out of print. In the first volume before us, therefore, we have that well-known wierd poem, 'The Buccaneers,' of which COLERIDGE's 'Antient Marinere' might have formed the type; a singularly wild, simply-created, yet powerful production; those admirable papers originally published under the title of 'The Idle Man,' containing 'TOM THORNTON,' EDWARD and MARY,' 'PAUL FELTON,' 'Domestic Life,' 'Musings,' etc., with many other pieces, which have become fixed favorites with the public. Mr. DANA's prose is the flowing of a pure, natural stream, and it makes green the meadows of the heart through which it winds its way. Much of the best of our author's writings will be found in the second yolume, which embraces his essays upon 'Old Times,' 'The Past and the Present,' 'Law as Suited to Man,' which were originally published, the first in the North-American Review,' the second in the American Quarterly Observer,' and the last in the Biblical Repository.' The remainder of the volume is devoted to the following reviews, several of which have already come under separate notice in these pages: ALLSTON's 'Sylph of the Seasons;' EDGEWORTH'S 'Readings on Poetry;' HAZLITT'S 'Lectures on the English Poets;' 'The Sketch-Book ;' RADCLIFFE'S Gaston de Blondeville;' 'The Novels of CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN;' POLLOK's 'Course of Time;' 'Natural History of Enthusiasm,' and 'Memoir of HENRY MARTYN.' Here is a rich field of criticism, and well is it occupied. The publishers of these volumes have performed their part to great acceptance, having taken care that good books should appear in a good and tasteful garb.

ICONOGRAPHIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART. Systematically arranged by E. HECK. New-York: RUDOLPH Garrigue, Astor-House, Barclay-street. THIS invaluable work, when completed in twenty-five monthly 'Parts,' of which the third is now before us, will contain five hundred steel engravings, by the most distinguished artists of Germany, with two thousand quarto pages of text, translated and edited by SPENCER F. BAIRD, A. M., M. D., Professor of Natural Sciences in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We are in no degree surprised at the popularity which this great series is acquiring. As we have before remarked, in noticing the work, nothing of a kindred description that we have ever seen can compare with the variety, the exquisite beauty, and faithfulness of the engravings. Objects of ocean, air, and earth; of things above and beneath; of mountains that rise into the clouds, and of the formations at their deep bases below the thick rotundity of the sphere; of all animal and vegetable existences; of 'creeping things and fowls of the air;' of familiar and unfamiliar machines and inventions, there are accounts and illustrations in this most comprehensive and instructive of all encyclopædias. The monthly parts are sent in port-folios, by which means the plates and text are carefully preserved, and the whole kept free from soil and dust.

SAINT LEGER, OR THE THREADS OF LIFE. In one volume. pp. 384. New-York: G. P. PUTNAM.

THERE is no attentive reader of this Magazine who will not hear with pleasure the announcement of the publication of the above-named volume. Those who have followed in these pages the fortunes of SAINT LEGER, and of the good and evil spirits thrown in his way, and who exercised so marked, and in certaln instances, so wonderful an influence over his destiny, will need no additional incentive to secure the perusal of the work before us. It is not requisite, nor would it be deemed other than a work of supererogation at our hands, to review in detail the incidents of the stirring narrative under notice. The machinations of that arch-fiend, VAUTREY; the mysterious character of the Wœdallah of romantic Saint Kilda, and the grace and loveliness of his daughter; the almost Mephistophelian creation of WOLFGANG HEGEWISCH; the sweet, gentle, simple-hearted THERESA VON HOFRATH and her father; all these, with clear remembrances of admirable descriptions of scenery, varying, in the most artistlike manner with the distinctive features of time, country, and particular region of country; these will be so vividly present to the reader of this notice, that while he will himself hail the intellectual treat before him, of which he has had a foretaste, he will not be slow in inducing others to follow his example. SAINT LEGER himself has given a very striking, nay, a very touching picture, of the motives which animated him. One can scarce read it without entering into the very spirit of the author:

'Ar the age of twenty-three years I find myself upon the threshold of two worlds. The PAST SUMmons the thousand incidents which have operated to determine me as a responsible being, and presents them before me, with fearful vividness. The PRESENT seems like nothing beneath my feet. And the FUTURE, no longer a shadowy dream, throws open its endless vista, and whispers that I must soon enter upon all its untried, unknown realities. Here I am permitted to pause a moment, ere I commence upon that new existence which ends only with the INFINITE.

"I have finished my life upon earth. The ties which connect me with the world have parted. I have to do now only with eternity. Yet something, which I may not resist, impels me to retrospection. I look back over my short pilgrimage, and feel a yearning which I cannot restrain, to put down a narrative of my brief existence, and to mark the several changes which have come over my spirit, in the hope that the young, with whom I chiefly sympathize, may profit by the recital.'

There is a moral, a moral fruitful of wise monitions, in a life full of events, and so solemnly regarded. To the records of that life we commend our readers; pausing in conclusion of this too brief notice merely to express our admiration of the neat and tasteful style in which the publisher has placed the volume before the public. It has already passed to a second edition.

THE WAR WITH MEXICO. By R. S. RIPLEY, Brevet-Major in the United States' Armv, Lieutenant of the Second Regiment of Artillery, etc. In two volumes. pp. 1174. New-York: Harper and BROTHERS.

THE present work, although mainly prepared during a period of respite from ordinary professional duties, would seem amply to fulfil the intentions of its gallant author. It gives 'a general and impartial account of those events which for a few past years have been of such absorbing interest, and which must necessarily be looked upon in future years as the most prominent of any which have occurred since the independence of the country.' The author claims, and we have no doubt with justice, to be impartial, and to present the different occurrences in their true light, stripped of the show and ornament which have been hung upon them in the exultation of the moment. The author had many advantages in the collection of his matériel; important among which may be mentioned a personal observation of the country on both of the principal routes of operation, an intimate acquaintance with many American officers, and some intercourse with those of the Mexican army.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

Anniversary Festival of Saint Nicholas.

As the official reporter of the SAINT NICHOLAS SOCIETY, we have the pleasure to lay before our readers an account of the Anniversary Festival of our Patron Saint, which was duly celebrated on Thursday the sixth of December, 1849. The Society met this year in an unusual locale. The venerable 'CITY HOTEL,' around which had hung so many pleasant reminiscences, and where JENNINGS and WILLARD had so long and so liberally ministered, with such satisfaction, had yielded to the influence of the times, and had given place to a

row of tasteful and costly ware-houses. The stewards, driven from their old home, were obliged to seek quarters for the Society farther up town; and about five o'clock the members accordingly began to assemble in the receiving-rooms of 'THE AMERICAN.' The Secretary read the proceedings of the special meeting of the Society, held on the twelfth of November, by which it appeared that the following gentlemen had been elected officers: