PARA; OR SCENES AND ADVENTURES ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZON. BY JOHN ESAIAS WarREN. In one volume: pp. 271. New-York: G. P. PUTNAM.

LIKE an oäsis in the desert the relation of these scenes and adventures on the banks of the Amazon stands among the many books of travel constantly issuing from the press. Such a profusion of brilliant description, such a luxuriance of bright coloring, such an amount of positive information, are rarely embodied under one cover. We have taken up the book, read it, and it now lies closed before us. But we are still lingering among the fairy scenery which it describes. Tall palm-trees wave their feathery branches in the breeze; the orange and the mango, the limetree and the graceful banana, droop around us with their golden fruit; the perfume of flowers steals upon us with a dewy fragrance; the murmur of running brooks falls soothingly on our ears; while before our dazzled sight float visions of lovely Indian girls, who with their dreamy eyes cast languid glances upon us, while their raven hair floats gracefully down upon their rounded shoulders.

No country on the face of the globe affords such a rich field to the traveller as the mighty provinces of South America. And of all these, Brazil is the richest, and Para the fairest division of Brazil. The author tells us it is called the 'Paradise of the World,' and well has he daguerreotyped it. His writing breathes the very odor of the tropics. Like the land which he describes, the book is full of sunshine and of flowers. When yet a young man, he visited this romantic land, and the impressions that were then stamped upon his mind, as the wondrous beauties of its scenery were unfolded before him, are given with all the freshness and with all the enthusiastic eloquence of a youthful mind, exquisitely sensitive to the influences of nature in its pristine grandeur and magnificence.

MOORE has rendered us familiar with the groves of Persia and the valleys of India. The vale of Cashmere and Bendemeer's stream, on whose banks he says 'the roses blossom all the year long,' we have always been inclined to regard as portraitures of natural scenery too glorious to be realities. But by this narrative, we find that scenes as lovely as those the poet sung of, are common in the land of Para; that it is no fiction; that there the flowers do bloom through the whole year; that the 'summer is perpetual and undisturbed;' and that there 'mammoth rivers, flowing rapidly from the lofty mountains, in which their childhood was nurtured, wander through the recesses of forests of unrivalled grandeur, distributing their fertilizing influences on every side. No sound now breaks their pervading stillness, save the voices of occasional wanderers, or the notes of happy birds.' What can be more picturesque and charming than the following:

'FAIR rose the morning of the ensuing day, and gloriously bright were the varied tints that glowed along the bosom of the western horizon!

Near us the dense foliage of the forest glistened in the sun-light, like an emerald drapery hung with dazzling jewels. The dew-laden branches rustled in the gentle breeze, and the low gurgling of the streamlet broke like music on our ears. Anon, the note of a distant toucan, or chattering of noisy parrots, suddenly disturbing the sublime solitude of the scene, seemed only to add to the intensity of its wildness and romantic interest. Insects innumerable sported with each other in the delicious atmosphere, and delicate little humming-birds floated gaily from flower to flower. Away off, on the green-mantled campos, herds of wild cattle and horses were quietly grazing; while now and then an immense flock of ducks or scarlet ibises would rise up in a body from the tall grass and soar triumphantly into the azure sky. Such was the picture which was presented to us on awakening, for the first time, from our delightful slumber at Iungcal.'

The following may challenge comparison with any kindred description:

WHILE winding through this natural labyrinth, the sun suddenly emerged from the golden east, and besprinkled us with a shower of luminous beams, which, trembling through the interstices of the leaves, seemed like the spirits of so many diamonds. A more divine spectacle of

beauty never was beheld. The most gorgeous creations of the poet's imagination, if realized, could not surpass in magnificence this sun-lighted arbor, with its roses and flowers of varied hues, all set like stars in a canopy of green. Sprightly humming-birds flitted before us, sparkling like jewels for a moment, then vanishing away from our sight for ever. Butterflies with immense wings, and moths of gay and striking colors, flew also from flower to flower, seeming like fairy tenants of the lovely paradise around us. But the indefatigable mosquitoes, who were continually pouncing upon the unprotected flesh of our faces and hands, as well as the mailed caymans who now and then plunged under our canoe with a terrific snort, kept up a vivid conviction in our minds of our own mortality.'

In a notice like this, it would be impossible to do justice to the merits of the work; for, independent of its descriptive portions, it is rendered uncommonly interesting by sketches of personal adventures which the author encountered in his wanderings. Many of them are told with a good deal of quiet simplicity and unpretending humor. It contains also a fund of information, which to the student of natural history will be very valuable. But we must not anticipate the pleasure which all will experience who may peruse this book, by making too copious extracts, although we feel much tempted to do so. We cannot however forbear introducing our readers to Monsieur le Boa Constrictor, although somewhat out of his element, being confined in a misera ble barrel. For all that, reader, have a care: let us test the strength of your nerves:

COMING up to the barrel, we perceived that its cover was supplied with a kind of trap-door, made of netted wire. Looking through this, as the light shone upon it, we had an excellent view of the slumbering serpent, coiled up in prodigious folds, pile upon pile, until he almost reached the top of the cask. The captain gave the barrel a hard kick with his foot, which roused the drowsy animal from its death-like stupor, when, opening his capacious mouth, and thrusting out his forked tongue, he hissed so loudly that the infernal sound might be heard by a listening ear at the extremest part of the garden. Breaking upon the silence of a lonely forest, how intensely fearful it must be!'

There, that will do, Monsieur Boa: we are satisfied. Please put up your tongue, and do n't shake the sides of that frail barrel quite so hard: it might burst, or a stave or two tumble out, and then· - clear the track! Commending the readers of the KNICKERBOCKER to the perusal of 'Para,' in whose pages much of it originally appeared, we leave them to be gratified with the gorgeousness of the additional scenes described, and with the facile pen of the author, which presents them so vividly to the imagination.

BULWER AND FORBES ON THE WATER-TREATMENT: a Revised Edition, stereotyped, with Additions and Improvements. New-York: FOWLERS AND WELLS, Clinton-Hall.

THIS work is a compilation of papers on the subject of Hygiene and Rational Hydropathy, edited, with additional matter, by ROLAND S. HOUGHTON, A.M., M.D., New-York. The leading paper in the book, SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON'S 'Confessions of a Water Patient,' which originally appeared in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine for September, 1845, is the only one of the number from a non-medical source. Its style is singularly quaint and pleasing, its manner warm and earnest, and its reasonings generally correct. It is addressed to literary men as a body, and written with a genuine friendliness and cordiality of tone.' Dr. FORBES's article on Hydropathy has already made its mark,' and provoked much controversial criticism. It is included in the volume, as the most thorough and satisfactory demonstration of the real merits and true province of the water-treatment yet offered to the public by any one member of the medical profession. The succeeding article embraces a couple of chapters from a Treatise on Healthy Skin,' by ERASMUS WILSON, MD., F.R.S., Consulting Surgeon to the St. Pancras Infirmary, Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology in Middlesex Hospital, author of a favorite text-book on Anatomy, etc. The fourth article consists of a careful abridgment of SIR CHARLES SCUDAMORE'S elegantly-written account of his Medical Visit to Graefenberg in

April and May, 1843. 'The fifth paper in the compilation is an abridgment of a very able work entitled, The Cold-Water Cure: its Use and Misuse Examined' The foregoing are doubtless the best arguments adducible in defence of the coldwater treatment yet advanced by its advocates; but we presume that many inmates of Sing-Sing prison would repudiate them entirely.

VOYAGES TO VARIOUS PARTS OF THE WORLD: made between the Years 1799 and 1844. By GEORGE COGGESHALL. In one volume: pp. 213. New-York: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. THIS volume is selected from a manuscript journal of eighty voyages made by the author, and is a simple record, in plain seaman's phrase, of very many interesting incidents and occurrences, for some of which we have tried, but unavailingly, to find space. We like the spirit in which our author went cruising about on the high seas, during 'war-time,' in his various little crafts, brave as JULIUS CAESAR, capturing prizes six times his size, and sometimes with ten or twenty more guns. The voyages recorded are in the schooner 'CHARLOTTE' to Savannah, thence to the Mediterranean, and back to New-York, in 1800; in the schooner 'INDUSTRY,' to Teneriffe, in the years 1805 and 1806; cruise in the Bay of Biscay, in the letter-of-marque schooner 'DAVID PORTER,' in 1813 and 1814; in the letter-of-marque schooner 'LEO,' from L'Orient to Charleston, and her capture, in 1814 and 1815; in the ship 'JOHN HAMILTON,' from Baltimore to Savannah, thence to Lisbon and St. Ubes, and back to New-York, in 1815 and 1816; in the pilot-boat 'SEA-SERPENT,' from New-York to Lima, in 1821 and 1822; and from New-York to Cadiz, and thence to St. Thomas and Alvarado, in the brig NYMPH,' of New-York, in 1823 and 1824. Here is a great variety of scene, and as there were 'stirring times' about those days, there is no lack of incident. Our author is an AMERICAN, heart and soul; and we must not omit to quote the closing paragraphs of his preface, in which he justifies the use of privateers and letters-of-marque as legitimate and necessary features of ocean-warfare:

ENGLAND assumed and boasted that a few broadsides from her wooden walls' would drive our paltry striped bunting from the ocean. Our seamen were impressed by them- our vessels searched in the most arrogant and offensive manner, and their people ill-treated. One outrage of this kind succeeded another, until one of their men-of-war fired her cowardly cannon into a harmless little unarmed vessel (Ápril 26th, 1806) off Sandy Hook, and one of our citizens was killed. This was followed by the crowning wrong and insult of the attack by the British frigate LEOPARD upon the American frigate CHESAPEAKE, in a period of profound peace, and at a moment when from peculiar causes the latter ship was in a defenceless position.

'This act roused a spirit which nothing could quell. Congress declared war in 1812 against the mightiest of the nations. But thrice were we armed,' for we had our quarrel just.' In less than three years, two entire fleets of British men-of-war were swept from the Lakes. More than fifteen hundred sail of British ships and other vessels were captured. One of our frigates vanquished two frigates of the enemy, one after the other, in fair combat, and afterward encountered at once two of their sloops-of-war with a like result. Other and gallant actions and victories followed. The spell was broken. British invincibility and British supremacy were at an end. The stars and stripes were no longer a theme of ridicule—our commerce was no longer at the mercy and conducted by the permission and sufferance of England.

Far be it from the writer of these pages to indulge in either a revengeful or a boasting spirit; but it may be permitted to one who in early life encountered so much of annoyance and injury so much that was galling to the spirit of every man who felt that the ocean was by right the free thoroughfare of all nations to rejoice that wherever our flag now floats it carries security, respect and honor to all beneath its folds; that the right of search,' claimed so long and exercised so arrogantly, is now abandoned; that our nation and our people know no superiors; and that we present at this moment the most remarkable spectacle the world has ever known of a free, prosperous, powerful, and educated people. Let it be our aim to bear our prosperity with moderation, with dignity, and with gratitude to the great RULER of nations; and to remember that we shall become base whenever we wield our power against the weak and humble, or in any cause that has not honor, truth and justice for its foundation and its end.'

The volume is executed with great neatness, upon large, clear types, and contains, beside a well-engraved portrait of the author, two or three pictures of vessels in the critical situations described in the 'Voyages.'

WAYSIDE FLOWERS: a Collection of Poems. By Mrs. M. ST. LEON LOUD. In one volume: pp. 276. Boston: TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS.

MR. PARK BENJAMIN, under whose capable supervision this work comes, in elegant guise, before the public, says in behalf of the poems which it contains, what no body who reads them will deny. They do 'deserve a cordial welcome from all who love terseness and purity of thought, joined to simplicity and grace of expression.' They seem like those wildings of nature from which they borrow their title-the spontaneous productions of a fertile soil—the free growth of an unartificial mind. Far sweeter are those buds and leaves which are wet with the dews of morning, than those on whose surface lie drops of moisture condensed from the steam of a conservatory. More beautiful, too, are flowers of nature's growth than exotics. A great part of the volume was written in the country, to whose mild influences the heart of the writer was captive; at first, in a secluded and beautiful valley of the Susquehanna, and later, in 'the sweet South,' from whose woods and fields she derived that inspiration which is not to be found among the brick walls and dusty streets of cities. Feeling predominates over fancy in the writer's lyrics, and the illustration is generally subordinate to the sentiment. We have room but for two short extracts, the first of which felicitously illustrates the voyage of life:

"THOU art flowing on, bright river!

In gladness, to the sea;

And summer sun-beams quiver
On thy waters joyously:

The graceful willows bending

With their shadow o'er thee thrown,
In murmurs sweet are blending
Their voices with thine own.

Oh! brightly art thou flowing,

Green, sunny banks between;
And many a wild-flower glowing
Is mirrored in thy sheen;
And barks are gliding gaily
Upon thy peaceful breast,
Which skilful hands are guiding
To the haven of their rest.

But ere thou meet'st the ocean

There are rocks and quicksands deep,

And winds, in wild commotion,

Will o'er thy bosom sweep;

And the barks, their sails unfurling

To the zephyrs' gentle play,

Lost in thy waters whirling,

Thou wilt bear as wrecks away.

'Like thee, the heart beginneth

Life when all things are fair;
Alas! it seldom winneth

The goal, untouched by care!
Hope's fairy pinnace, freighted
With dreams of future joy,
Hastes to the quick-sands fated
Its promise to destroy.

'Wrecks of the dreams so cherished
Are floating darkly by,

Lik the gallant ships that perished
When winds and waves were high;
The flowers that bloomed around it
The fount now idly choke,

And the sun-bright hopes that bound it
Are like parted cables broke.

'But soon, O flowing river!

Though wild thy course may be,
Thou 'It merge thy waves for ever
In the deep, unbounded sea;
And to the heart is given

A calm repose at last;

Though sorely it hath striven
With the billow and the blast.'

Very pensive and tender is this little piece, which appears under the modest title of 'A Fragment. It may be a 'fragment,' but it is a fragment from a whole mind:

'PLANT not the cypress o'er my grave,

When I am dead;

But let the fragrant sweet-brier wave
Above my head.

'I could not sleep beneath the gloom
Of yew-tree shade:

Then let the sweetest wild-flower bloom

Where I am laid.

'And let the pleasant sun-light fall
Upon my head;

And the fresh dews of evening all

Their pure drops shed.

And when the stars look from the sky,
Come where I rest;
There kneel, and lift thine heart on high,
That I am blest.'

A calm and thoughtful face, marked, it seems to us, with lines of care or sorrow, the likeness of the author, fronts the title-page. We commend her work to the affections of our readers, as a volume well calculated to elevate the head and heart over the unspiritual influences of this 'work-day world?

EDITOR'S TABLE.

A VIEW FROM 'TELEGRAPH - HILL, SAN FRANCISCO. We invite the reader's attention to the subjoined admirable epistle to the EDITOR, from a friend and correspondent in far-off 'Eldorado.' It is as graphic as a painting, and moreover is imbued with true feeling, which cannot be simulated. The letter was written in April last; and into it we plunge, in medias res: The rainy season has fairly commenced, yet the Storm-king is by no means inexorable, but often courteously gives place to the Sun, who readily avails himself of the privilege, and lights up the newlywashed face of Nature with a brilliancy of which the unhappy dwellers in Atlantic cities cannot have the faintest idea. At such times it is my delight to ascend 'Telegraph-Hill,' an eminence of some twelve hundred feet in height, and reclining upon the green slope, with a quiet cigar, to bask in the glorious sunshine, and look down upon this city of magic, and its beautiful surroundings. Though many of the accessories of a fine landscape are wanting, yet the scene is not without its charm. There is a delicious, dreamy haziness in the atmosphere, lulling the senses to repose, and lending enchantment to every thing upon which the eye can rest. Looking westward through the portals of the 'Golden Gates,' I see the mighty swell of the Pacific rolling onward with a dignified good-nature until it reaches the shore, when it loses its equanimity at once, and dashes the foam high upon the imperturbable rocks, proclaiming at the same time its resistless and overwhelming power in its own solemn and majestic tones. Glancing along the opposite shore of the bay, my eye rests with delight upon the graceful outlines of the magnificent WHITE SQUALL,' peerless among clipper-ships, as she gallantly dashes outward on her fleet career. In the distance I see the long line of green mountains of the 'Contra Costa,' varied only by a single forest of pines, far behind which is visible the summit of Mount Diabolo,' blue in the distance, yet with its outline clear and sharp in the pure atmosphere; before which rises abruptly the small matter-of-fact-looking island of Yerba Buena,' with the ghostly wreck of the ill-fated 'pent-up Utica' at its base.

And now I look down upon the wonder of the nineteenth century, this miracle of progress and promise, which yesterday was not, and to-day ranks in the first class of cities; in whose history a period of four years carries us back to dim and remote antiquity. How shall I describe it, as it appears to me now, laid out in most scrupulous regularity, but built in every possible style of architecture which the heart of man can conceive, from the stately brick edifice, which would be respectable in any eastern metropolis, down to the most grotesque and nondescript shanty? In the place of innumerable spires that strike the eye of the beholder in more ancient and ad