specimen before us maintains the motto. The author has gone deeply into the history of the Spoon, of which he gives us curious facts in all periods. He does not challenge your gravity in these researches. He shakes no reverend head while quoting you the old fathers into whose chronicles he dips his instrument. Very far from this. He takes you pleasantly by the hands, seats you at your ease, and going into his wellstored library, gives you sample after sample of clever anecdote and racy illustration, without giving you an opportunity to conjecture how deep are the studies in which he engages your attention. We shall look, spoon in hand, for the rest of the hash, of which the dish before us is no discouraging sample.

9.-Alida; or Town and Country. By the author of "Allen Prescott." "Where

The heart, beneath the meanest vestment, claims
Alliance with diviner things than state

Of monarchs and their minions,-I have found
My teachers."

ION. TALFourd.

New-York: Henry E. Langley. 1834.

FOR the simple narrative of real life in the domestic world, Mrs. Sedgwick, the author of the tale before us, proved her sufficient capacity by the story of "Allen Prescott." There were few more certainly successful books than that at the time of publication. The pure taste, the gentle spirit, the nice propriety, the unaffected expression, and natural material, which formed its characteristics, rendered it acceptable to all readers with whom the moral sense was not absolutely blunted. The story of "Town and Country" before us, belongs to the same class, and will, we doubt not, be found equally acceptable to the reader. Such writers as Mrs. Sedgwick are peculiarly agreeable to us, as indicating still the existence of a pure taste in some of our writers, at a time when we are overrun with the prurient and vicious tendencies of the French school of novelists.

10.-The Mysteries of the Heaths, or the Chateau de Chevelaine. From the French of Frederic Soulie. Translated by George Fleming. New-York: Henry G. Langley. 1844.

It is pleasant, in these days of cheap literature, to meet with the books of Langley. They are always in better style, in neater costume, paper and print, than their contemporaries. This volume is a fair specimen, attractive at sight. It deserves its agreeable habiliment. No story could well be more interesting. There is force of character and

of situation to commend it. The materials are not common-place, and the personages are men and women, of flesh and blood, not of board and buckram. We are let into some surprising particulars in regard to certain portions of the population and territory of France. The history of these "heaths" is, in itself, a remarkable one. The gipsy race by which they are held is not less so. Marrion is a well-conceived character, and the whole action is lively and dramatic. The story is a very tragic one,--but the horrors seem so naturally the result of the circumstances, that they do not offend against good taste. Let us add that the style of the translation is not unworthy of the material.

11.-Life in the New World; or Sketches of American Society by Seatsfield. Translated from the German, by GUSTAVUS C. Hebbe, L.L. D., and JAMES MACKAY, M. A. New-York: J. Winchester, New World Press.

GREAT has been the cry, and little the wool, in the case of the worldrenowned Seatsfield. Humbug had done its best (and worst) to give circulation to the writings of this unknown personage, but, haplessly, in vain. The ruse has not succeeded. Yet Seatsfield, we have no question, is a real person, and, what is more, a person of talent. That he is a pretender and an impostor, is not less questionable. He has made singularly free use of some of the American authors, and with their stock to go upon, he has been, by some of the soi disant American critics, exalted above all American fame. There is something very hard in the career of domestic authorship. Here is a foreigner, who makes free with their materials, transcribes whole passages from their pages into his own, and is re-translated into English, as one incomparably superior to the very writers from whom he steals. He is a wonderful genius until it is found out that he is a thief; and then his works are as much decried as before they were beplauded. Yet, to do this man justice, he is, in some respects, a man of ability. His intellect is better than his morale. He has really considerable power in the delineation of scenery, and, in speculative politics, he has no little force and originality. His "Cabin Book," and the latter parts of the "Sketches of American Society," are full of merit. His "North and South" is a wretched farrago of balderdash and flummery.