Around the World in Eighty Days

**More than 50 Illustrations included as they appeared in the original publication!** What shall we take to read in our vacation? We should say, for a guess, that this question has been asked us five thousand times within the last two months. We are glad to have found one answer, that can be made at once, and with emphasis. Take Verne's " Round the World in Eighty Days." If you want something that is thoroughly funny and absurd, and asks nothing in the world of you but to...
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**More than 50 Illustrations included as they appeared in the original publication!**

What shall we take to read in our vacation? We should say, for a guess, that this question has been asked us five thousand times within the last two months. We are glad to have found one answer, that can be made at once, and with emphasis. Take Verne's " Round the World in Eighty Days." If you want something that is thoroughly funny and absurd, and asks nothing in the world of you but to be entertained, that is the book. If you have read "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas " you will not need to be told this. If not, this is as good to begin with as that. Jules Verne has certainly struck a rich, new vein in fiction, and that in the most natural way in the world,-by founding it upon the popular science that is just now uppermost in literature. He has taken this " tide in the affairs of men " at its full, and will undoubtedly ride into fortune, as he has into public favor, on the crest of the wave.

The story this time is of an enigmatical English gentleman, a member of the Reform Club, said to resemble Byron in looks, but "a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old,"-witness in that one stroke our author's felicity of description! This Phileas Fogg lays a wager of twenty thousand pounds, with four brother members of the Club, that he will go around the world in eighty days, and meet them in the same room at precisely the expiring moment of the time. He was as lucky as young Chuzzlewit in finding at the moment of departure, a Mark Tapley, in the form of a French valet, admirably fitted to "come out strong" under all sorts of discouragements, and to be jolly under the most creditable circumstances. He is as unlucky, also, as many a less honest man, in being suspected of knowing too much about a great robbery of the Bank of England, since he has money to spend so recklessly,- twenty thousand pounds to his opponents in the wager, twenty thousand more for his journey. So while Passepartout, accompanying, helps to convoy him through all difficulties, a government detective, following, as busily heaps difficulties in the way. Between the three, the game becomes daily more exciting; it is like a champion game at chess, with moves much more lively and on a vastly larger scale. Verne knows well how to make the facts of science his vassals to fetch and carry for his plot.

As the game narrows, curiosity heightens, and we feel much as if our money were deposited with that handsome sum at the reform club. Exultingly we watch each timber of the ship that the invincible Fogg has bought, go under the boilers, and victoriously we ride into port on the dismantled hulk. We hold our breath, as fate does its final worst, when, in the person of the pertinacious Fix, she arrests the supposed bank-robber on his own English ground. We count the moments, watch in hand, more anxiously than the sphinx-like Fogg; and when the blunder is manifest, we assist at the solid knocking down of that over-zealous detective, with right good will. We should have gone wild with despair, when London was reached fifteen minutes too late, had we not been sure that some scientific mystery would help us through; and we are far less surprised than the parties most concerned, when it appears, in that lucky day they had unconsciously gained by going around once with the sun. Just in time, after twenty-three hours of philosophical submission to fate, Phileas Fogg makes this discovery, and walks in upon his anxiously-waiting friends, just as the clock beats the sixtieth second of the expiring time, with a calm " Here I am, gentlemen."