ts on
their merits. Their peculiar power consists in their freedom from
speculative subtleties, their luminous exhibition of the essential
evangelical doctrines, their spirit of fervent and elevated piety, their
wise adaptation to the workings of the human heart, and their affluence,
aptness, and beauty of illustration. Mr. Abbott is eminently a writer for
the masses. His practical common sense never forsakes him. He is never
enticed from his firm footing amidst substantial realities. The gay
regions of cloud-land present no temptations to his well disciplined
imagination. He must always be a favorite with the people; and his moral
influence is as salutary as it is extensive.

Blanchard and Lea have issued a reprint of BROWNE'S _History of Classical
Literature_. The present volume is devoted to the literature of Greece,
and comprises an historical notice of her intellectual development, with a
complete survey of the writers who have made her history immortal. Without
any offensive parade of erudition, it betrays the signs of extensive
research, accurate learning, and a polished taste. As a popular work on
ancient literature, adapted no less to the general reader than to the
profound student, it possesses an unmistakable merit, and will challenge a
wide circulation in this country.

We have also from the same publishers a collection of original _Essays on
Life, Sleep, Pain_, and other similar subjects, by SAMUEL H. DIXON, M.D.
They present a variety of curious facts in the natural history of man,
which are not only full of suggestion to the scientific student, but are
adapted to popular comprehension, and form a pleasant and readable volume.

George P. Putnam has republished SIR FRANCIS HEAD'S lively volume entitled
_A Faggot of French Sticks_, describing what he saw in Paris in 1851. The
talkative baronet discourses in this work with his usual sparkling
volubility. Superficial, shallow, good-natured; often commonplace though
seldom tedious; brisk and effervescent as ginger-beer, it rattles
cheerfully over the Paris pavements, and leaves quite a vivid impression
of the gayeties and gravities of the French metropolis.

James Munroe and Co., Boston, have issued the third volume of
_Shakspeare_, edited by Rev. H. N. HUDSON, whose racy introductions and
notes are far superior to the common run of critical commentaries--acute,
profound, imbued with the spirit of the Shakspearian age, and expressed in
a style of quaint, tho