We know nothing more striking than the dying speech recorded in the concluding chapter.  At the end of a life so laborious and so useful, the Judge, himself withdrawing to be judged, murmurs,—­“Gentlemen of the Jury, the facts of the case are in your hands.  You will retire and consider of your verdict.”  In this volume, the son has submitted the facts of the case to a jury of posterity.  His case will not be injured by the modesty with which he has stated it.  He has claimed less for his father than one less near to him might have done.  We think the verdict must be, that this was a great man marooned by Destiny on an out-of-the-way corner of the world, where, however he might exert great powers, there was no adequate field for that display of them which is the necessary condition of fame.

Mr. Parsons has done a real service to our history and our letters in this volume.  Accompanying and illustrating his main topic, he has given us excellent sketches of some other persons less eminent than his father, sometimes from tradition and sometimes from his own impressions.  We hope in the next edition he will give us a supplementary chapter of personal anecdotes, of which there is a large number that deserve to be perpetuated in print, and which otherwise will die with the memories in which they are now preserved.  The strictly professional part of the biography, illustrating the Chief Justice’s more important decisions, might also be advantageously enlarged.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.

Songs of the Church; or Psalms and Hymns of the Protestant Episcopal Church, arranged consecutively to Appropriate Melodies; together with a Full Set of Chants for each Season of the Christian Year.  New York.  Delisser & Proctor. 12mo. pp. 453. $1.00.

Napoleonic Ideas.  Des Idees Napoleoniennes, par Le Prince Napoleon Louis Bonaparte.  Brussels, 1839.  Translated by James A. Dorr.  New York.  D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 154. 50 cts.

The Art of Extempore Speaking.  Hints for the Pulpit, the Senate, and the Bar.  By M. Bautain, Vicar-General and Professor at the Sorbonne, etc., etc.  With Additions by a Member of the New York Bar.  New York.  Charles Scribner. 12mo. pp. 304. $1.00.

The Atonement.  Discourses and Treatises, by Edwards, Smalley, Maxey, Emmons, Griffin, Burge, and Weeks.  With an Introductory Essay by Edwards A. Park, Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover, Mass.  Boston.  Congregational Board of Publication. 8vo. pp. 596. $2.00.

The Harp of a Thousand Strings, or Laughter for a Lifetime, etc., etc.  New York.  Dick & Fitzgerald. 12mo. pp. 368. $1.00.

Life of George Washington.  By Washington Irving.  Vol.  V. New York.  G.P. 
Putnam. 8vo. pp. 456. $2.00. 12mo. pp. 434. $1.50.

The Flounced Robe and What it Cost.  By Harriet B. M’Keever. 
Philadelphia.  Lindsay & Blakiston. 18mo. pp. 114. 50 cts.