tition with the Federal Government. These are selected for locality and quality as the choicest lands, and will be the first settled; but if the progress of settlement continues as heretofore, twenty years at least will elapse before they are occupied. The settlement in Ohio, it appears, from 1830 to 1840, was at the rate of 7 acres only to each individual; while in Illinois and other States the sales were at the rate of 33 acres to each inhabitant added to the population. In Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, upwards of $50,000,000 were borrowed

abroad and invested in lands put under cotton cultivation. All the banks so organized have failed, the money is lost, and all the lands pledged for it are subject to foreclosure-a powerful argument against any supposed extension of sales of public lands in those sections for many years to come. Hence the proceeds of the lands as a resource to government, or as a basis for paper issues to relieve, as it is called, the States, for many years to come are utterly out of the question. The vast sales of 1835-6 anticipated settlement for thirty years at least.

GRASS HILLS, KENTUCKY. To the Editor of the Democratic Review:

SIR-Regarding your Magazine as the leading guardian of the purity of our language, on this side of the Atlantic, as well as of the true spirit of our institutions, I respectfully call your attention to the wide-spread abuse of a word which the mournfully degraded honesty of our country has of late brought into very frequent use, viz. DEFALCATION for DEFAULT.

I should not have directed so slight a communication to your grave page, did I not discover that the error has been sent out in official papers from the heads of the Government, and even from the judicial bench. I deemed, therefore, that a decision upon the merits of the word must necessarily be pronounced by a like high authority, to have its proper effect; and, accordingly, present the following definitions and derivations before your critical tribunal for final sentence:

was so applied; while the word Default expresses precisely what is meant. A. J. S.

It would be at variance with a well settled judicial principle to decline a jurisdiction tendered to us. We therefore accept it, and decide as follows. Defalcation may not be as good English as Default, but it shall remain good American for the present, so long as our detestable paper-money creditsystem continues, demoralizing the national character so as to make one word insufficient for the public serviceas an extra pair of oxen are sometimes yoked to a team of horses to help them along. Defalcation, moreover, is a bigger word in every respect than Default, and has therefore a peculiar appropriateness to the magnitude of the scale on which these operations are sometimes now conducted in so many of our banking and other moneyed corporations. It properly denotes a shaving or lopping off, with a scythe or pruning-hook-an image graphically descriptive of the process to which the term is applied. For the strong expediency of the case, therefore, the word shall stand, as a good enough word for a bad thing at least until the country's return to honesty and hard money shall relieve us of the necessity of its continuance, and make one word sufficient to express the idea. The appeal is therefore dismissed, with costs.-ED. D. R.

The Bible in Spain; or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in un attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. By GEORGE BORROW, author of "The Gipsies of Spain." Philadelphia: Jas. M. Campbell, 98 Chestnut-st. Saxton & Miles, 205 Broadway, New York. 1843. 8vo. pp. 232.

By all odds, and by universal consent, the pleasantest book of the day! Mr. Borrow has fairly taken the public heart by storm. He comes, he is looked at, he conquers his book has not been circulating forty-eight hours (in the cheap and popular though very readable form in which the publishers have presented it for halfa-dollar) before it is in almost every hand, and its praise on almost every lip. Gil Blas redivivus, and engaged in the service of the British Foreign Bible Society, as missionary agent to introduce and distribute the Bible in Spain! And then it can be enjoyed with so good a conscience -it is all about "the Bible." Not only may we sinners enjoy it to our hearts' content-we world's-people, who can take down any other volume of honest amusement any day in the year-but to the saints themselves, to whom such an indulgence is a greater rarity, and who so devoutly feel bound to mortify the flesh upon the never ending supplies of "pious books," which are daily issuing from the press, in the intervals of time afforded them by their large weekly religious papers-to these Mr. Borrow has indeed afforded a most welcome holiday. Of course to have a book with this title in one's hand is almost as good as having the Bible itself; and that Sunday can be set down as most irreproachably as well as delightfully spent, of which a large proportion has been given to these most agreeable of pages.

The book is about as full of entertainment, as the saying runs, as an egg is of meat. Through highways and byways, crowded capitals and wild despoplados, Mr. Borrow pursues the object of his mission, by personal rambling, through the midst of danger and often hardship, into every nook in the very heart of the country where he can hear of a chance of selling a volume of his wares. He meets with a vast variety of character and adventure, which are sketched with a rich and

VOL. XII.-NO. LVII.

42

racy vigor and vividness that leave nothing to be desired. The history of his proper professional mission has very little to do with the interest of the book. It is little else than the thread which holds together the pearls he strings upon it. It is indeed occasionally brought in, apparently from a certain sense of decent duty, but he certainly seems most to revel in the enjoyment of his adventures and the narration of them, when he "sinks the shop" and forgets for the time what he is travelling for and about. We cannot help thinking that it would have been much the same to him if it had been tin pots and pans, instead of Bibles and Testaments, the sale and distribution of which had afforded him the opportunity of indulging his taste for this roving, gipsy sort of life. In fact, we should like to inspect the parish register of our author's birth and baptism to satisfy ourselves that he is not after all a real instead of a mock gipsy, as he sometimes exhibited himself

At

and that he is not playing off a grand "hokkawar" on the public in the character in which he here acts and writes. any rate we hope he will continue the narrative which is broken off very abruptly at a point promising a wide field of interest among the Moors. There would seem to have been few quarters of the globe unvisited by him-as also but few of its languages with which he is unacquainted. We trust he will now fight all his battles o'er again, and give us some more similar delightful chapters of his most extraordinary life and career, in other countries also as well as in Spain.

A Residence of Eight Years in Persia, among the Nestorian Christians; with Notices of the Mohammedans. By Rev. JUSTIN PERKINS, with a map and plates. Andover: Published by Allen, Morrill & Wardell. New York: M. W. Dodd. 1843. 8vo. pp. 512.

This is a highly instructive as well as pleasing and entertaining work. The author has brought back from the land of his missionary labors, as well as having taken to it. It is very copiously illustrated with colored drawings of different characters and classes of the inhabitants, which, though somewhat rude in drawing, (they

were for the most part from the pencil of a Persian artist), by the aid of the rich hues of their costumes convey a striking impression of what they represent. It will be remembered that Mr. Perkins, on his return home, was accompanied by one of the Nestorian bishops, Mar Yohannan, from whom he states, in the Preface, that in preparing the work for the press he derived some useful information and aid, in the verification of his notes and recollections. We have not been able to do more than give a few hours to the task of dipping here and there into its pages, but have seen enough to satisfy us that it was well worth publication, and well worthy of patronage, not by those alone interested in it as a narrative of missionary labors, but by all those to whom lively and well written sketches of the country, people, and manners, which the author was thus led to observe, would be acceptable.

This volume was written, as declared by the author, for the purpose of counteracting the injurious influence exerted, against the cause of "truth," as understood by the sincere mind and pious heart from which it evidently proceeds, by that most powerful and touching anti-catholic story, "Father Clement." It consists, for the most part, of Protestant and Catholic disputation, resulting of course always in the triumph of the latter, and eventually in the conversion of the chief interlocutor on the other side-a process finally consummated by his witnessing with his own eyes the annual miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, at Naples. So far as we can judge from a cursory examination, the book is well and forcibly written ;-the devout Catholic will doubtless find in it much edification and instruction in the principles of his own faith; though of the effect it may produce on the Protestant reader, each must be the judge and measurer for himself. It is one of the signs of the reviving religious spirit of the age, which in no portion of the general Christian body shows itself more vigorously than in the Catholic Church, that such a book should be put forth, seeking to make earnest and abstruse doctrinal disputation, for the purpose of proselytism, attractive through the medium of dialogue and tale.

Letters from the Earl of Shrewsbury to Ambrose Lisle Phillips, Esq. Descriptive of the Estatica of Caldaro and the Addolorata of Capriana. First American, from the second London Edition. New York: Casserly & Sons, 108 Nassau-st. 1843. 12mo. pp. 92.

This little pamphlet describes some very extraordinary cases of Ecstasy of a religious character, which are regarded by their Catholic witnesses and narrators as superhuman evidences of the special presence of the divine power and grace in the subjects of them, for the purpose of illustrating the truth of Catholic doctrines and of stimulating the faith and zeal of all believers. The first is that of a girl named Maria Mörl, now about 30 years of age, a native of a little village named Caldaro, near Trent; who is described as passing the greater part of her time in a state of trance or ecstasy, insensible to external objects, generally on her knees in her bed, though sometimes standing on the points of her feet, as it were in the act of rising from the earth, with no sign of motion or life, except a most rapt and celestial expression, for hours at a time. This habit commenced about ten years ago, and seems to have grown out of her intense excitements in connection with the taking of the Holy Communion. A word from her Confessor recalls her from this statewhich, except at times when under the influence of an intense sympathy with the agonies of the Passion on Friday-is of other case is that of the Domenica Lazari, most placid and blissful character. The styled the Addolorata of Capriana, a lonely village among the mountains of the Tyrol-a girl of about 25 years of age. Her ecstasy is rather of a character of agony or sympathy with the sufferings of the Cross. She is said not to have eaten, marked on the hands and feet with the drank or slept for eight years. Both are stigmata, or marks of the nails of the cross, while the latter has her forehead encircled with the marks of the crown of thorns,-from all of which blood at times flows; in the case of the Addolorata, with ties are related of them, and of some other considerable profusion. Other incredibilicases described in the pamphlet, to which the reader must be referred for them. It is certain that they are testified to by witnesses of respectability, though by down as priestly impositions. We may most Protestant readers they will be set perhaps speak further of these extracr dinary narratives on a future occasion, in reference to their possible bearing on the subject of Mesmerism.