versation between Mrs. Vernon and William ?

"I can give you counsel, my son, but you alone must act."

"Aye, good mother, and your counsels shall guide my acts, even as the compass guides the mariner."

"I doubt it not, dear boy. I know that youth is always lavish of good promises; still, I doubt you not."

"By my uncle's love," affirmed William, 'I'll endeavor to redeem mine, and byand-by return to you, not like the prodigal son, a repentant sinner, but like a Spartan hero, wearing the wreath of success on my brow, and the flush of triumph on my cheek."

And so on, with variations, through the whole.

-We have hesitated whether to say anything of Hagar, the Martyr, by Mrs. H. MARION STEPHENS. Lest, however, we should allow harm to happen for lack of our warning, we may briefly state that it is a vulgar book.

-Nelly Bracken, by ANNIE CHAMBERS BRADFORD, is a semi-romance of the times of the early history of the West. Its incidents are somewhat forced and over-remarkable, and its characters rather harshly drawn. But there is considerable power in the story, and it indicates the existence in the authoress of the capability, with due industry, of producing something much better.

-Country Life, and Other Stories, by COUSIN MARY, is a respectable little volume of moderately good stories for children.

-Miss CHARLOTTE M. HIGGINS' Angel Children, or, Stories from Cloudland, is somewhat more ambitious in character, inasmuch as small angels mingle among the human children of the tales, as guardians and guides. The stories are rather pretty, but not elaborated as carefully as the supernatural element requires. However, that is a point upon which the class of readers for whom the book is written will not be hypercritical.

-The abridged Exposition of the Grammatical Structure of the English Language, by J. MULLIGAN, A.M., is, we believe, a good text-book for advanced schol. ars. But it would need very ample illustration and elucidation by the instructor. Mr. Mulligan very properly gives up the foolish phantom called "the objective case," and presents a clear and reasonable paradigm of the English verb. The work seems to be executed with thorough scholarship, and independent and correct thought.

-Thoughts to Help and to Cheer. A second series of this work or collection is published. The extracts are rather common-place, and very good. It would have added to the value of the book, if the names of the writers whose thoughts are used had been given.

-Dr. E. J. LEWIS' American Sportsman is a manual of practical information for the more thorough and satisfactory destruction of all such wild birds as may be eaten. It also contains many detailed collateral directions, apparently the result of actual experience; and certainly enounced both lucidly and entertainingly.

-It has been forcibly said that the study of the prophecies and the Apocalypse either finds men crazy or leaves them so. In those mysterious regions of investigation, it must be a very firmly-balanced mind which can shun the temptation to adopt lucky hypothesis and accidental analogy, instead of axiomatic statement, and clear demonstration. The author of Pius Ninth, the last of the Popes, has not escaped the influence of that mystic maze of figures and types, the wonderful Revelations of St. John. He succeeds entirely to his own satisfaction in demonstrating that the year 1866 will witness the death of Pio Nono, and the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. We shall not pretend to state an opinion on such a subject; preferring, and advising others, to wait and see, rather than to risk vain excitement and final mortification.

-The controversy between the partisans of formulary and extemporaneous prayers, is probably long or always to be decided not by any generally recognized logic, for all, but by idiosyncratic preference for each. We, however, apprehend that both, at present, the spontaneity of American character, and in future both that, and an advanced education in thought and expression, preclude any prospect of the universality of the custom of using a formula for prayer. For all, however, not already committed to any particular book, we can very honestly recommend The Bible Prayer-Book, by Rev. W. W. EVERTS. Its petitions are numerous and varied, its language scriptural and chaste, and the hymns and extracts from the Bible which accompany each prayer, usually judiciously chosen. Neither have we observed that the Baptist auspices under which it is published, have at all incapacitated it for the use of those

of other communions. It would, indeed, be strange if they should.

-The Light of the Temple, by Rev. W. P. STRICKLAND, is a sort of paraphrase of those scenes of the Bible, which present most clearly the successive manifestations of God to men. The descriptions are filled out with rather too free an imagination; and the engravings are miserable.

-Sermons, chiefly Practical, is the title of a volume of discourses, by Rev. CHARLES LOWELL, of the West Church, in Boston. These sermons are brief and direct expositions of scriptural truth, sometimes aimed with uncommon directness against those every-day wickednesses which the Christian ministry are so often-and often so unfairly-charged with ignoring. Dr. Lowell, as a Unitarian, does not anywhere speak of Christ as God; an omission which will, of course, disenable the book from circulation or usefulness, with very many not of his own denomination.

-Among the many duties of The Coming Man, not the least difficult and necessary will be the task of preparing a full set of good school-books for The Coming Children. Innumerable writers have felt, in their experience as teachers, the lack of such; have done their best to supply the want; each in turn have been superseded by the "next no better," and yet the good school-books are a desideratum. It is our belief-nec inexperti loquimur-that the struggle is in a wrong direction. Teachers must be better prepared, not books. To a good teacher, any book, or no book, is enough; at least in elementary studies. With such views, we see with indifference the rapid successions of geographies or arithmetics" on an entirely new plan," which flood the country weekly. They all fail, and must fail, for the simple reason that the teaching cannot be put into the book. The book which will tend to improve our methods of instruction, is a Manual of Methodology for Teachers; and such a book we have yet to see, although we believe that such an one is in contemplation, at least in one quarter. CORNELL'S Primary Geography, which lies before us as we write, seems to us an improvement upon other primary geographies, in respect to paper, printing, binding and illustrations; especially as to those cuts which serve as definitions of the names of the principal divisions of land and water; but in respect to the common faults of geo

graphical text-books, viz., beginning at the wrong end, notable superficiality, and at the same time, extreme compression; it is neither better nor worse than the other elementary geographies of the day.

-We have received the twenty-sixth annual volume of The American Almanac, published by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & Co. We can testify experimentally to its extreme value as a convenient compendium of reference, in all matters of contemporaneous general information respecting the political and politico-economical status of the nation and of the separate States.

-Among literary projects in process of execution, are two whose completion will supply long-felt desiderata; a History of Printing; and a Dictionary of English Literature. In the first enterprise, one of the editorial fraternity of Boston, Mr. B. PERLEY POORE, has been engaged for ten years. The result of his labors will appear in twelve mailable numbers, sent to subscribers for five dollars. One feature of the work will possess especial interest; namely, fac-similes of early MSS. and of early printing. The Dictionary of English Literature is in preparation by S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, of Philadelphia, who addresses himself to the task as to a labor of love, and who is fortified for it by the possession of one of the best bibliographical and biographical collections in the country. The work will comprehend a biographical dictionary, a careful selection of estimates of authors, by other and confessedly competent authors, and-which will, we apprehend, be the most extensively useful department of the work-an index of authors' names, under the titles of the subjects on which they have written.

REPRINTS.-We have received A Third Gallery of Portraits, by GEORGE GILFILLAN. It is a truly Gilfillanian book; full of the excellences and faults of its writer's strong individuality. It contains brief delineations of the personal and mental char acters of Napoleon, Mirabeau, Chalmers, Gerald Massey, Macaulay, Emerson, Poe, Burke, Professor Wilson, Shakespeare, and several other leading writers and speakers. all of which are dashed off with a red-hot intensity of style, which sometimes exag gerates into spasms, and even further, al most to mere gibberings. An expression of his own describes many of his figures"hot, gorgeous metaphors, hatched between

excitement and vanity." For Mr. Gilfillan is vain; threatening to demolish adversaries; talking of himself; claiming remarkable intuitional discoveries; perfectly convinced that he looks at everybody from just the right stand-point. This certainly is the way to succeed with the superficial; but the first inquiry which a thoughtful man makes about Mr. Gilfillan is, "Is he competent to estimate and define all these great men, the paradoxes and representatives of the human race?" Whatever is the biographical value of these rapid sketches, they are very entertaining reading, and full to overflowing with sounding and striking phrases and thoughts. We seem here and there to detect an imitation of Carlyle; there is a great occasional plunge into the bathos, as where he figures for a dreadful spectacle, the "Tarpeian Rock, toppling over the Dead Sea," calls Rousseau a "winged frog," or states, in relation to the Reformation, that Protestantism rent a covering from the Bible and that the Catholic Church could not repair the rent; speaks of "Cyclopses," and "Novum Organons ;" and cries out, as nobody ever did in actual earnest, "Alas!" Yet, in spite of all that, and of his occasional unscrupulous and unacknowledged quotations of some very pat expression, his queer Pre-Millennial Second-Adventism, his obscure pets-one Aird, and the "Bailey School" of poets-second-rate men often nourish third-rate pets--and his funny rage at Firmilian, for making fun of one of them, Mr. Gilfillan writes with abounding vigor, earnestness and point; and has in the present work furnished a gallery of pictures very noticeable for striking effects and rich coloring, if not for severe accuracy of drawing.

-Prof. F. BOWEN has edited DUGALD STEWART'S Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, revising, abridging, and annotating the same, in order to make a school-book of it. A book of such abstract nature may, if accompanied with much better instruction than college-students usually receive, be profitably used as a collegiate text-book; but we presume there are very few institutions of a lower grade, except the higher female academies, whose scholars can profitably use it.

-Rev. F. A. FARLEY has superintended a second edition of Dr. FRANCIS PARKMAN'S Offering of Sympathy to the Afflicted. The character of the work, which is a judi

cious compilation of extracts and short es says, &c., intended for the perusal of persons in affliction for the loss of friends, is not changed; a very few omissions and alterations only having been made. We think it would have been more respectful to the memory of the deceased compiler, if the work had been left as he left it.

-C. S. FRANCIS & Co. publish a new edition in 8vo., double columns, of Professor LONGFELLOW'S Poets and Poetry of Eu rope. This volume is a collection of translations, original and reprinted, from the most characteristic poems of the Continental European nations, not compelled into English poetry, but so transferred as to show the peculiarities of thought and style, of each tongue. The work is well and thoroughly done, and the book of unquestionable value to the general reader.

-We have rejoiced in receiving THOMAS HooD's Poetical Works, edited by EPES SARGENT. It is much the completest and best printed collection which we have seen, of the poems of one of the very truest and noblest of England's many true and noble writers.

-May and December, by Mrs. HUBBACK, is a story of English social life. May, its heroine, a poor beauty, marries December, (Mr. Cameron) a wealthy merchant, for his money. Through the machinations of a villain, her cousin, who desires to manage her, and her husband's money by her means, he (the husband) becomes suspicious that she is unfaithful, and refuses to live with her. They are afterwards reconciled, the husband shortly dies, and the book leaves May a Lady Bountiful in a country parish, and James Wildey, the villain, endowed by her with great wealth, to his own entire satisfaction, but not exactly in a reasonable way. The book is not very remarkable, either for plan, thought, character, or diction.

-LITTLE & BROWN continue their Aldine series of English poets, with the Poetical Works of COLERIDGE, KEATS, and of ISAAC WATTS. Each collection is prefaced with a portrait and a succinct bat comprehensive biographical notice of the author; that of Coleridge, we presume, by the very judicious editor, Prof. Child; that of Dr. Watts, by Robert Southey; and that of Keats, a most delightfully written and piquant, as well as truthful and apprecia tive sketch, by James Russell Lowell.

TRANSLATIONS.-The Literary Fables of DON THOMAS DE YRIARTE, translated from the Spanish, by GEO. H. DEVEREUX, are intended in an especial manner to hit off the foibles of literary men. The analogies would have borne a universal application, and would have been more striking if so used. The graces of composition have usually, and very correctly, been sacrificed by Mr. Deverenx, in order to give a true representation of the peculiarities of his author's thoughts and style. As thus presented, these fables are rugged and angular in form, but often furnishing a stinging rap over the knuckles of impertinent or foolish writers and critics.

ENGLISH.-The war continues to inspire innumerable publications, from the daily letters of private soldiers, to the daily books of savans or travellers, and of those clairvoyant gentlemen who stay quietly at home and compile full. true, and particular accounts of the other end of the world and what takes place there. Aside from this literature, which is so legionary in name and number, as not to admit other than an aggregate reference, but few books of es pecial interest are announced.

-Professor CREASY, author of The Fif teen Decisive Battles of the World, has written a History of the Ottoman Turks. It is compiled in considerable part from the hitherto untranslated and tediously extensive work of the celebrated Orientalist, VON HAMMER; and furnishes much new and reliable information.

-Sir GEORGE STEPHEN, at the request of Mrs. H. B. STOWE, has written a series of letters, now published in book form, stating his personal reminiscences of facts and details connected with the abolition of slavery in the British Islands. Many of his statements will be new to American readers. According to Sir George, the merit of the actual final accomplishment of this emancipation is not due so much to Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton, Sturge, and their friends, who worked so long and so bard in the preliminary agitation, but to two Quakers, named Cooper, and to Sir George himself. He also makes some very honest and entertaining confessions as to the employment of electioneering claptrap, and the ordinary dirty enginery of political warfare, in the same good cause.

-Dr. DORAN's Habits and Men, with Remnants of Record touching the Makers

of Both, is a book of unmitigated gossipry; full of amusing information and anecdote about dress and its history in particular, and men collaterally, and by way of illus tration.

-The third volume of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S Memorials and Correspondence of CHARLES JAMES Fox, continues the series of his letters, and the history of his life during the period of the French Revolution. The fourth and last volume will contain the narrative of his subsequent re-entry into public life, and short tenure of office in the Ministry.

-The History of the Irish Brigades, in the Service of France, by Mr. J. P. O'CALLAGHAN, is a chronology rather than a history, but contains a large and laboriously collected accumulation of dates and facts relating to the many bold Irish soldiers who have served in foreign armies on the Continent of Europe, rather than remain within the scope of the English power; and many of whom there rose to high honor and good fame.

-SAMUEL WARREN, Esq., has collected material for two volumes of Miscellanies, from papers contributed by him to Blackwood's Magazine, during twenty years past. They are among the most interesting of the many excellent articles which have appeared in that periodical.

-Professor EASTWICK, of Haileybury College (hitherto the training school and only introductory institution for cadets desiring to enter the English East India Company's service, but which is shortly to be discontinued), has translated in full the Fables of Pilpay, the oldest, and in Sir William Jones' opinion, the best of fabulists. Pilpay, however, is a sort of Mrs. Harris, or at any rate, a nom de plume for one Vishnu Sharman, who appears to have been the actual writer.

-Archbishop WHATELY has risen to the dignity of a Proverbialist. A volume of Detached Thoughts and Apothegms, is published, which moreover is only a First Series. Although we cannot expect that "a wiser than Solomon is here," yet, very few writers of English have the generalized perspicacity of thought, and terseness of expression, which are the essence of apothegmatics, in so high a degree as Archbishop Whately.

FRENCH.-Among late French publications, we observe but two named of any

especial interest. Count RAOUSSET DE BOULBON, at leaving France for California, left behind him the MS. of a novel called The Conversion. On the strength of the expectation of a sale from the general interest felt in the memory of the man, rather than from any intrinsic excellence in the book, it has since been published. The hero of the tale is a Parisian dandy, who, having become disgusted with the vile and hollow fashionable city life, flees into the provinces, becomes converted by a young country abbess to a most retrogressive Catholicism, and is dismissed in peace at the end of the book, with his conscience easy in a priest's keeping, and his circumstances easy by means of his marriage with an heiress. The story is told in the fiery and extravagantly passionate style which seems proper to men like him, of vehement character, and great physical strength and activity; but will undoubtedly owe whatever success it may enjoy, to the strange fame of its eccentric author.

-M. ROMAIN-CORNUT has re-edited the Confessions of Madame de la Vallière, written by her after her assumption of monastic vows, and corrected by BOSSUET. These mournful meditations of a repentant court-beauty, furnish a sad but interesting picture of the unhappy life and half-regretful reminiscences of the beautiful Louise. The Confessions have heretofore been attributed to Madame DE LONGUEVILLE, and to Madame DE MONTESPAN; but M. RoMAIN-CORNUT is probably entirely correct in his conclusion that Madame DE LA VALLIERE is the actual authoress.

THE FINE ARTS.

-H. K. BROWN's Equestrian Statue of Washington.-At length New York is to have a worthy statue of Washington, erected in a commanding situation-her first public work of Art, and that, commissioned, not by the Government of the City, but by private citizens. This is, at the same time, well, and not well; it is certainly well that the statue of a great public benefactor should be the spontaneous tribute to his memory of those who reap the fruits of his labor; on the other hand, it is not well, that New York, a city of fortunes, should, at this late day, have no public work of Art, whether in Painting, Sculpture, or Architecture, to which her citizens can point as evidence that the

wealth of which the city boasts, is in the hands of liberal and highly educated men.

When we last saw the statue, which is the subject of these remarks, Mr. Brown had it so far advanced toward completion, that portions of the detail were ready to be sent to Chicopee for casting. The figure of Washington was more complete than that of the horse, but still, far from being finished, and, indeed, only the action and the motives of the statue can be comprehended at present, the detail and the minor points of expression and effect, not having been, as yet, fully developed. The work is of colossal size-we are not able to state the exact dimensions-and is noticeable at the first glance for its repose of treatment. The theory of the statue is, that it represents the PRUDENCE of Washington. It is not the Soldier, leading the arms of his country to battle-nor the General, reviewing his troops-nor the President, receiving the acclamations of the people-but it is the Father of his Country, discerning the peculiar dangers that await his children in the future; and throwing the whole weight of his example and his advice on the side of Prudence. It is Washington restraining -curbing; it is a statue of the man, which, if it fail to excite enthusiasm, must always move to reverent regard.

Mr. Brown has not thought it necessary to excite the admiration of the injudicious. by poising the charger on which Washington sits, either on his fore feet, or on his hind feet. He has better understood his art and the natural restrictions of his material. He has sought to carry into the action as well as into the sentiment of the statue, the repose which characterises the best works of Sculpture. It is true, that the action of Washington is a decided one-he lifts his right arm, and stretches out his hand with a mingled air of command and entreaty-but it is also a continuous action. The attitude of the horse expresses restlessness and unwilling submission. He stands firmly on three feet, and paws the ground impatiently with his right forefoot; his head also tosses and frets under his master's curbing rein. The conscious action of Washington is directed wholly toward the people; the restraining his horse is involuntary, but it admirably serves the purpose of impressing the motive of the statue upon the mind. As he represses the impatience of the young and mettlesome charger, so would he exercise a restraining influence