THE SKETCH-BOOK OF THE SOUTH,
Is a collection of desultory papers, written or supposed to be written during a visit to Italy and a campaign in Greece. These are various, at least in mode. Some arc merely descriptive ; some are a sort of melange of the spirit of history, biography, and anecdote. In others, existing objects connected with olden times suggest associations which induce the author to attempt peopling the present with the creatures of the past; as, after de- scribing the Monastery of Monte Vergine, he draws a fancy picture of Crusaders returning thither from the Holy Land. In others, again, a fragment of personal autobiography is made to give life and individual interest to descriptions of scenes and man- ners. The style of the writer has something both of elegance and animation ; but, except in description, his images, if real, are unsubstantial, and there is an air of juvenility throughout. The charm of these kind of works is in their freshness—perhaps in the freshness of the reader's mind. Those who have met but few such, will be pleased with the Sketch-Book of the South.
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