, Parker, Hedge, Bellows,
and Huntington are the little ones?

There is an amusing passage in which Mr. Choate would seem to assume
to himself and those who agree with him the honors of martyrdom. This
shows a wonderful change in public opinion; though the martyrs in the
"Legenda Aurea" and Fox seem to have had a harder time of it than we
supposed to be the case with Mr. Choate.

We have not space to follow him farther, and only the reputation of
the man, and the singularity of the occasion, which gave a kind of
national significance to the affair, would have tempted us to intrude
upon the select privacy of the Young Men's Democratic Association.

Finally, as Mr. Choate appears to have a very mean opinion of the
understandings and the culture of those opposed to him in politics, we
beg to remind him, since he has been led out, like Balaam, to prophesy
against the tents and armies of the Republican Israel, and has ended
by proving their invincibility, that it was an animal in all respects
inferior to a prophet, and in some to a politician, who was first
aware of the presence of the heavenly messenger; and it may be that
persons incapable of a generalization--as that patient creature
undoubtedly was--may see as far into the future as the greatest
philosopher who turns his eyes always to the past.

Footnote 1: We may be allowed to wonder, however, at his speaking of
"memories that burn and revel in the pages of Herodotus,"--a phrase
which does injustice to the simple and quiet style of the delightful
Pepys of Antiquity.

LITERARY NOTICES.

DR. ASA GRAY'S _Botanical Series_, New York, Ivison & Phinney,
consisting of--

I. _How Plants Grow_, etc., _with a Popular Flora,_
etc. 16mo. pp. 233.

II. _First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology._
8vo. pp. 236.

III. _Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany and Vegetable
Physiology._ 8vo. pp. 555.

IV. _Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, including
Virginia, Kentucky,_ etc. 8vo. pp. 636.

V. Same as IV., with the _Mosses and Liverworts_ added,
illustrated by Engravings, pp. 739.

VI. Same as IV., with II. bound up with it. pp. 872.

The first-named of these books is a new candidate for public favor;
the others are revised and improved editions of books which have
already been favorably received. We have sometimes thought that the
popularity of a school-book is in inverse proportion to its merits,
and are glad to learn that f