Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renown'd metropolis,
With glitt'ring spires and pinnacles adorn'd,
Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams.

_Paradise Lost_, iii. 543.

The _Sunday Library_, it should be added, is printed in correspondent
style with the _Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, and each volume has a finely
engraved Frontispiece Portrait.

* * * * *


VENETIAN HISTORY.

The _Family Library_ Editor has judiciously enough filled his 20th
volume with "Sketches" from the History of Venice. Another volume is
promised, the present extending from the settlement of the Veneti in
Italy to the year 1406. The intention is stated to be, "to present in
detail some of the most striking incidents of the History of this great
Republic, connecting them with each other by a brief and rapid survey of
minor events;" for which purpose the Editor has freely taxed Sismondi
and the late Count Daru. The result is one of the most enchanting
volumes of historiettes that has ever fallen into our hands;
illustrating, to be sure, numberless dark points, or "damned spots" of
human history; "much of atrocious guilt, of oppression, cruelty, fraud,
treachery, baseness, and ingratitude;" yet the very heinousness of these