The Country of the DwaVs. By Paul du. Chaillu. (J.
C. Hotten.)— M. du Chaillu puts a critic into some difficulty. If he would give a word of preface to the effect, "all this true," or "all this romance," or "this is a mixture of truth and romance," he would deserve our thanks. We are quite willing to accept his word implicitly, but it is too much for a reviewer's sagacity to determine between fact and fiction in a book on such a subject as this. No stay-at-home critic who has the least regard for his reputation would pretend to say whether any one particular incident related about a country so bizarre, so full of marvels as Africa,. is or is not true. The " Dwarfs " are certainly a very strange race, but we do not know that they are much stranger than the Lapps. As for the interest of the book, we scarcely know what to say. In one way it bears out its title of a new work of stirring adventure," but there is something inexpressibly dreary about these descriptions of African life. The strange weird atmosphere, full of all sorts of devilries and. enchantments, like that which Hawthorne makes in his New-England scenes, but utterly wanting in all that is refining and ennobling, gives one a strong feeling of repulsion. But that is not M. du Chaillu'a fault ; in one sense, when we regard the faithfulness of the picture which he gives 11; it is his merit.
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