Those who accuse Margaret Howth of harshness and a lack of winsomeness, have neither understood the people whom it describes nor the degree of stern strength requisite to wrest from life and nature fresh truth.  The pioneers of every great natural school (and every indication shows that one is now dawning) have quite other than lute-sounding tasks in hand, however they may hunger and thirst for beauty, love, and rose-gardens.  Under the current of this book runs the keenest, painfulest craving to give freely to life these very elements—­its intensest inner-spirit is of love and beauty; it throbs and burns with a sympathy for suffering humanity which is at once fierce and tearful.  As regards the minor artistic defects of Margaret Howth, they are, if we regard it entirely, the shadows inseparable from its substance, felt by those who remain in them, but in no wise detracting from the beauty of the edifice when we regard it from the proper point of view.

ETHICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES, CHIEFLY RELATIVE TO SUBJECTS OF POPULAR INTEREST. By A.H.  Dana.  New York:  Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street; Boston:  Crosby & Nichols. 1862.

A delightful collection of essays of the most valuable character, in which the agreeable is throughout fully qualified with the useful.  The titles of several of these chapters are of themselves attractive:  Races of Men, Compensations of Life, Authorship, Influence of Great Men, Lawyers, Hereditary Character, Sensuality, Health, Narcotic Stimulants, Theology, and The Supernatural,—­all of them treated with a clearness and comprehensiveness which can not fail to earn for the work extensive popularity.

BAYARD TAYLOR’S WORKS, VOL.  III.  Caxton Edition.  At Home and Abroad.  Second Series.  New York:  G.P.  Putnam.

The third volume of this exquisitely, printed and fully-illustrated series of the works of BAYARD TAYLOR is, in all respects, fully equal to its predecessors, both as regards typographic and literary merit.

THOMAS HOOD’S WORKS, VOL.  III.  ‘Aldine Edition.’  Edited by Epes Sargent.  New York:  G.P.  Putnam.

The materials of the present volume, as we are informed by the editor, have been chiefly drawn from the collections of humorous pieces published by THOMAS HOOD under the title of Hood’s Own, Whimsicalities, and Whims and Oddities.  In connection with the first volume of this series it completes the reprint of all of HOOD’S poems.  The present volume is, like its predecessors, most exquisitely printed and bound.  It contains a grotesque title-page from the pencil of HOPPIN, with a fine steel engraving of the author.

A SOUTH CAROLINA PROTEST AGAINST SLAVERY.  New York:  G.P.  Putnam. 1861.

A very interesting letter from HENRY LAURENS, second President of the Continental Congress, to his son, Col.  JOHN LAURENS, dated Charleston, S.C., Aug. 14, 1776, now first published from the original letter.  It contains a vehement plea for Emancipation, and speaks with bitter contempt of England for encouraging the slave-trade in America.