celebrate and record them. He was supposed by most people, and almost by himself, to have gone crazy. If anything, at this day, is more incredible than the feat which he accomplished, it is the derision with which the public viewed his labors, decried his success, and sneered at the rags which betokened the honesty of his poverty. To every one who had brains capable of logic, he had demonstrated the feasibility of his visions. But no amount of even physical demonstration, then possible, could bring out the funds requisite to pecuniary profit, against the head-wind of public scorn. It whistled down his high hopes of fortune. At last, dropping the file and the hammer, he took the pen, determined, that, if others must get rich by his invention, he would at least save for himself the fame of it. The result of his literary labors was an autobiography of great frankness and detail, extending to several hundred pages, and embracing almost every conceivable violation of standard English orthography, with which he seems to have had very little acquaintance or sympathy. It was placed under seal in the Philadelphia Library, not to be opened for thirty years. At the expiration of that period, in 1823, the seal was broken, and the quaint old manuscript, with the stamp of honest truth on every word, stood ready to reveal what the world is but just beginning to "want to know" about John Fitch. He afterwards went to Europe to promote his steamboat interests,—to little purpose,—wandered about a few years, settled in Bardstown, Kentucky, made a model steamboat with a brass engine, drowned disappointment in the drink of that country, and at last departed by his own will, two years before the close of the last century. A life so full of truth that is stranger than fiction ought not to be treated in the Dry-as-dust style, quite so largely as Mr. Westcott has done it.
Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America. Illustrated by Plates and Wood-Cuts drawn from Life. By Arthur M. Edwards. New York: 1858.
This book has appeared since the notice in our July number of two English works on the Aquarium. Like so many books by which our literature is discredited, it is a work got up hastily to meet a public demand, and is deficient in method, thoroughness, and accuracy. There is much repetition in it, and the observations of its author seem to have been limited to the waters around New York, and to have extended over but a short period. In spite of these and other minor defects, it may be recommended as containing much useful information for those just beginning an aquarium and forming an acquaintance with the sea.
We trust that a misprint in our former notice has not brought disappointment to any of our readers, by leading them to expose their aquaria to too much sunshine; for the sunshine should be "not enough" (and not, as it was printed, "hot enough") "to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air."
The Exiles of Florida: or the Crimes committed by our Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws. By Joshua R. Giddings. Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster, & Co. 1858.
A cruel story this, Mr. Giddings tells us. Too cruel, but too true. It is full of pathetic and tragic interest, and melts and stirs the heart at once with pity for the sufferers, and with anger, that sins not, at their mean and ruthless oppressors. Every American citizen should read it; for it is an indictment which recites crimes which have been committed in his name, perpetrated by troops and officials in his service, and all done at his expense. The whole nation is responsible at the bar of the world and before the tribunal of posterity for these atrocities, devised by members of its Cabinet and its Congress, directed by its Presidents, and executed by its armies and its courts. The cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, which make the pen of Motley glow as with fire as he tells them, the dragonnades which scorched over the fairest regions of France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have a certain excuse, as being instigated by a sincere, though misguided religious zeal. For Philip II. and Louis XIV. had, at least, a fanatical belief that they were doing God service by those
