ion,) Mr. Hayne shows a
genuine vigor of expression and maturity of purpose. There is a tone of
sadness in the volume, as if the author were surrounded by an atmosphere
uncongenial to letters. The reader cannot fail to be struck with this,
and also with the oddity of two or three political sonnets, in which Mr.
Hayne calls on his fellow-citizens to rally for the defence of slavery
in the name of freedom. The book is dedicated, in a very graceful
and cordial sonnet, to Mr. E.P. Whipple; and it is seldom that South
Carolina sends so pleasant a message to Massachusetts. Mr. Hayne need
only persevere in self-culture to be able to produce poems that shall
win for him a national reputation.

_Fairy Dreams; or Wanderings in Elfland._ By JANE G. AUSTIN. With
Illustrations by Hammatt Billings. Boston: J.E. Tilton & Co. 1859.

This is a pretty book for children, written with no little feeling and
fancy, and in a graceful style. The chimney-corner has been abolished
by the economical furnace-register, and Santa Claus, if he come at all,
must do it like an imp of the pit. The volumes for children to pore
over, as they bake by the stove, or stew over the black hole in the
floor, have also suffered an economic and practical change. No more
fires, no more pretty fancies, seems to have been the doom. Parents who
think, as we do, that children inhale practicality with our American
atmosphere, and that a little encouragement of the imaginative side of
their nature is not amiss, will be glad to drop Mrs. Austin's book into
the proper stocking. The stories are well told; that, especially, of
the Gray Cat is full of fanciful invention. The book is very prettily
manufactured also, though we think publishers are carrying their
fondness for tinted paper too far. Salmon-color is too much; the deepest
tint allowable is that of cream from a cow that has grazed among
buttercups.

_Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India:_ Being Extracts from
the Letters of the late Major W.S.R. HODSON, B.A., Trinity College,
Cambridge; First Bengal European Fusileers, Commandant of Hodson's
Horse. Including a Personal Narrative of the Siege of Delhi and Capture
of the King and Princes. Edited by his Brother, the Rev. GEORGE H.
HODSON, M.A., Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. From the
Third and Enlarged English Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860.
16mo. pp. 444.

This book should be widely read; or we might better say, this book _will
be_ w