"The book differs materially and advantageously from ordinary memoranda of travels in this particular, that instead of giving a continuous narrative of all his movements, necessarily embracing much tedious and uninteresting detail, he has made up his work somewhat after the fashion of a sketch book, in distinct chapters, each containing a description of some interesting scene, or incident, or person, or class of society. Mr. Colton has contented himself with describing what he saw in such language as any sensible, well-educated man would use, who had eyes to see, and a soul to feel withal, but no particular ambition to figure as a turner of magniloquent paragraphs, therein also differing materially from the multitude of tourists, who are marvellously given to gild refined gold and paint the lily.'"-New-York Mercantile Advertiser. "Two as pleasant, entertaining volumes as one might wish to read; and, strange to say, as strongly marked with novelty of detail as any other characteristic, after all the multitude of books, letters, and impressions, and descriptions, with which the public has been favoured for many years past by all manner of tourists. The principal cause of this freshness both of matter and manner is, that very thing which at first sight one would suppose most incompatible with it, viz., the length of the author's sojourn among the people he describes. Ordinary travellers merely go scampering through the country, noting, of course, only the prominent points which lie in the accustomed track. Mr. Colton was there four years, and had time to go looking for new things, and to make repeated and deliberate investigations of those of which others have given us merely the results of a few hurried glances. Mr. Colton's descriptions both of men and things are certainly very clever, lively, graphic, and entertaining; and he has collected facts, political, statistical, &c., which are curious and valuable.”—Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer. "Among the numerous works of this class, we have rarely met with any which we have read with more pleasure than the volumes now presented t our perusal under the above title. Candid in his opinions and judicious in his observations, the writer has brought together a large mass of information respecting those subjects which are most interesting to an American reader. The minuteness of his descriptions tends to impress very forcibly upon the mind those scenes of which he treats; and, while looking over the different chapters in which Mr. Colton speaks of the coronation and other splendid sights of this kind, we can almost imagine ourselves a beholder of the spectacle."-American Traveller. "We have read with pleasure Colton's Four Years in Great Britain.' It is an instructive and interesting work. The author exhibits much shrewdness and accuracy of observation; and there is a uniform, moderate tone-an absence of exaggeration throughout the book, which ensures the confidence of the reader. The picture presented of the wealth, magnificence, pervading comfort, and civilization of England is very striking. The extreme beauty and high cultivation of the country, the splendid relics of former times, the perfection of roads and coaches, the gorgeous pageantries of the most magnificent court of the world the security of property and person, and the elegance and refinement of the higher classes of Society, are all described and commented upon with the enthusiasm and delight which their templation is calculated to inspire in a benevolent and cultivated nind."-National Gazette, |