Europe, knows that, at least in the middle states, it most resembles that of the central part of the continent. Scarcely any European genus of trees or shrubs is without its representative in our country. But it must also have been remarked, that our species are in general much more vigorous: trees which are small in Europe, are often in our own country far greater in size; genera which there are but shrubs, in our woods attain to the dimensions of trees. But this is not all. European shrubs transplanted to our gardens, if they ever become naturalized, will generally acquire much more vigor than in their native country; while in Europe our ornamental shrubs dwindle down far below their natural size. Hence it follows, evidently, that plants which harmonize perfectly in Europe, as well in size and forms, as for the colors of their foliage and their flowers, may not be at all adapted to each other in our own gardens. In forming our landscape gardens, therefore, we must select plants, whether native or naturalized, that are found to harmonize here; and in forming our woods, by taking native trees, we have much greater chance of arriving at satisfactory results, than by filling them with a great number of European ones. It is generally acknowledged by all travellers, that no landscape effect is to be compared to the aspect of our woods in autumn; and no one who has been on the Catskills will deny that in summer they are fully equal in beauty to those in Europe. And still, however varying the woods may be there, as we ascend, they are still very much inferior to those of some parts of the Alleghany mountains. Nowhere in Europe are there to be found, in any natural wood, so many kinds of trees as in ours; and nowhere can we better see what effects art might produce in our parks, than by studying what nature produces in her own plantations. We have not less than ninety different species of trees in our own state, and at least as many shrubs, which by cultivation might produce an immense number of varieties. Trees and shrubs are the very plants of which the United States may boast, while other countries have a much more varied flora of herbaceous plants. Let us, then, try to take our own nature for our guide in landscape gardening directly, and not indirectly by seeing first what effect our trees produce in English parks; and let us look abroad for flower gardens.

Mr. Downing gives the plan and list of plants for a flower garden, of which the effect must be charming. There must be a great many tropical, or at least southern herbaceous plants, which complete the period of their existence in a very short time, or which at least do not require more than some months of warm weather to

One of the most beautiful flower gardens in Europe may be seen in any oatfield of France, in which there are often intermingled, scarlet poppy, blue centaury, lychnis githago, the summer and harvest adonis, and the great daisy. No gardener was ever able to compose a more elegant and harmonious parterre than this, which requires no other care than the tilling of the ground, and the sowing of the mingled seeds.

complete it. We do not doubt that plants of this kind, if sown in hot-houses, from seeds either obtained directly from their native countries or from hot-houses, and planted in June in the open air, would be better adapted to our climate than most of the European garden plants, the green parts of which our hot summer sun, bursting forth so suddenly, prevents from being fully developed, though their flowers may appear in their full beauty. We know not if any attempts have been made with the view here pointed out, but we think that we might have some originality even in our flower gardens. We leave to practical men the solution of this most interesting question. They alone are able to solve it. If there existed in our country any endowed botanical garden, questions like this might have been solved long ago for the public benefit, at the expense of the community. But unfortunately we have not, and therefore they are likely to remain unsolved.

6. The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes; containing evidence of their Identity, an Account of their Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, together with Sketches of Travel in Ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media, and Mesopotamia, and Illustrations of Scripture Prophecy. By ASAHEL GRANT, M. D. New York: 1841. Harper and Brothers.

A VERY remarkable feature of our present literature is its richness in books of travels. Of late we have contributed our full share, in labors of this kind, to the stock of human knowledge; and our activity in this field of exertion is to be attributed, in a great measure, to the impulse imparted by the missionary spirit now so general among us. The volume now under consideration is one of a large number that our Asiatic missions have produced, and is justly entitled to be ranked with the valuable works of the same class which preceded it. The author was selected by the American Board of Foreign Missions to visit the country of the Nestorian Christians, which is situate among the mountain solitudes of Koordistan, and surrounded by predatory bands, professing a hostile faith. It was deemed important by the Board to send a physician on this dangerous mission, as they had reason to believe that a person of that profession would be more secure against violence, and less likely to excite the suspicions of the ferocious hordes through which he must pass. Dr. Grant renounced a valuable practice at home to accept this appointment, and departed on his mission in the spring of 1835, from which he did not return till the autumn of 1840. During this long absence from his country, his only fixed residence was in the city of Ooroomiah, which stands in the centre

of a large plain, having the snow-clad Koordish mountain chain on the west, and the lake of its own name on the east. It is a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, mostly Mohammedans, and is now the centre of the mission, whose labors are extended throughout the province situate in this plain. "Twelve or fourteen free schools have been opened in the villages of the plain; a seminary and girls' boarding school have been established on the mission premises in the city; considerable portions of the scriptures have been translated into the vernacular language of the Nestorians. They have opened the churches for our Sabbath schools and the preaching of the gospel." Here, in this remote and almost unknown nook of the earth, Dr. Grant was established for three or four years, devoting himself to the duties of his profession, for the benefit alike of Mohammedans and Christians, and, as it seems, with great success and to great acceptance. We know but few facts more characteristic than this of the adventurous spirit of our countrymen ; and we are glad to have it in our power to add, that it was a nobler purpose than the pursuit of gain, which called and fixed him there. We regret the scantiness of his details about the people among whom he dwelt so long; it seems to us that they must have furnished him rich materials for remark; but the first part of his book, to which he confines his narrative, is very short, and much of it is appropriated to an account of his visit to the Independent Nestorians, who are hidden among the fastnesses of the mountains. This portion of the work is exceedingly curious and interesting, and, we doubt not, a single extract from it will suffice to excite a desire in our readers to see the whole :—

"The country of the Independent Nestorians opened before my enraptured vision like a vast amphitheatre of wild, precipitous mountains, broken with deep, dark-looking defiles and narrow glens, into few of which the eye could penetrate so far as to gain a distinct view of the cheerful, smiling villages, which have long been the secure abodes of the main body of the Nestorian church. Here was the home of a hundred thousand Christians, around whom the arm of Omnipotence had reared the adamantine ramparts, whose lofty, snow-capped summits seemed to blend with the skies in the distant horizon. Here, in their munition of rocks, has God preserved, as if for some great end in the economy of his grace, a chosen remnant of his ancient church, secure from the beast and the false prophet, safe from the flames of persecution and the danger of war.”

We have not room to give our author's account of the usages and rites now practised by this remarkable and isolated remnant of the primitive church; we can only say, in general, that they fully corroborate the statements of previous writers on the subject, and conclusively prove the preservation among them of so much of the Christian faith and practice as to seem almost miraculous, considering their ignorance, their want of the scriptures, and the gross superstitions which surround them on every side.

The second and third parts of Dr. Grant's work are taken up with an attempt to prove the identity of the Nestorians and the lost

tribes: the discussion of this point would lead us too far; we shall therefore confine ourselves to a mere enumeration of his arguments. These are:- The Tradition of the Nestorian Christians, that they are descendants of Israel; supported by the testimony of Jews and Mohammedans - the places to which the Ten Tribes were deported, now occupied by the Nestorian Christians - the Ten Tribes never removed from Assyria; proved historically, by circumstantial evidence, and by inference from Scripture prophecies-language, same as spoken by the Jews in that regionnames applied to the Nestorian Christians, proof of their Hebrew origin-observance of the Mosaic ritual, sacrifices, vows, etc.— physiognomy, names, tribes, government, etc., proofs that they are a distinct people, or an unmixed race-social and domestic customs, the same as those of the ancient Israelites. These arguments are all fully stated, and supported by facts. He then answers the objections which might arise from the conversion of the Ten Tribes to Christianity, as required by the supposition, and proves that this is conformable to Scripture prophecy and to history. The author's opinion is maintained throughout with great force and learning, and great appearance of truth; his book every where evinces zeal, piety, and talent; but it shows that his mind harbors many strong prejudices, particularly against the Roman Catholic church, and in other respects it is often wanting in candor. In point of style, it is generally well written, but sometimes a little verbose and turgid.

7. Collections of the New York Historical Society. Second Series, Volume I. New York: 1841. For the Society.

THE appearance of this volume is an evidence of the revived activity of the New York Historical Society, in collecting and preserving the materials which pertain to the history of the State. It is filled with papers and works of great importance in their relation to this subject, some of which are now first published from the original manuscripts, and some are translations of historical memoirs, existing before only in a foreign language not generally known here. So far as we can judge from a hasty examination, the selection of the materials for the volume is very judiciously made, and great care seems to have been bestowed upon it in all other respects. It is printed on good paper and in a very fair and handsome type, and embellished with a beautiful engraved portrait of Governor Stuyvesant and a lithograph of the government house, as it was in 1795; it contains, also, a curious map of New York, in 1656, copied from the one in Vander Donck's Description of the New Netherlands, in Dutch. It is edited by Mr. George Folsom, librarian of the society, to whom the society and the public are indebted for some of the most valuable papers contained in it, and for the general fine appearance of the volume.

8. The Progress of Democracy; illustrated in the History of Gaul and France. BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS. Translated by an American. New York: 1841. J. and H. G. Langley.

THOSE who are familiar with Alexandre Dumas's Gaule et France, may be at a loss to recognise it under the new title which it has received from the American translator; this change seems hardly justifiable, and it might create a suspicion that the same liberty has been taken with the work itself; but this is not the case; the translation is as faithful as the language of the original will allow. The book is a curious specimen of the tendency of the French mind to generalize facts and form theories; with great ingenuity it weaves the whole history of France, from the time it ceased to be a Roman province to the present day, into a regular tissue, developing, as it goes on, certain great social principles, just as the web brings out the figures of the pattern in the very place where they are intended to appear. God's great purposes relative to humanity are clearly manifest to the author, and France, of course, is the country in which the social destiny of the whole human race is to be developed. As a historical summary, it is admirable; and, viewed as such, no work of that extent could be more instructive; but in its philosophy, none was ever more fanciful. His grand idea of an approaching social regeneration, is founded upon the belief, that "three men have, from all eternity, been foreordained to accomplish this mighty work: Cæsar, Charlemagne, and Napoleon.

Cæsar was to pave the way for Christianity;
Charlemagne for civilization;

Napoleon for liberty."

When the elements combined against the latter in Russia, "his mission was accomplished, and the hour of his'downfall had arrived; for liberty was now to gain from his fall as much as she had formerly done from his elevation. God, therefore, withdrew his hand from Napoleon, and, to make His intervention in human affairs visible to all, He changed the nature of the contest. Man no longer contended with man, but the order of the seasons was reversed; snow and cold were sent upon the earth before their time, and the elements destroyed an army." Here we have the substance of his whole theorythe past events of history, and especially of the history of France, have all been ordained to prepare for the accomplishment of God's final intentions, with respect to the social condition of the human family, and that condition he pronounces to be one of UNIVERSAL LIBERTY. But one obstacle to its attainment now remains-the present monarch of France, and him the hour of destruction awaits; "and in that hour," says M. Dumas, "the recollections of a man, overpowering those of a citizen, will cause one voice to exclaim, Death to royalty, but God save the King!-That voice shall be mine."