ertaining book. Its author is a _genial_ writer--he writes with a
relish and with real power--he loves knowledge, and wishes others to
share it with him. Language, he holds--though the idea is not new with
him--springs from a very few hundred roots, which are the _phonetic
types_ produced by a power inherent in human nature. Every substance has
its peculiar _ring_ when struck--man, under the action of certain laws,
must develop first onomato-poietic sounds, and finally language. With
this we take leave of this excellent work, trusting that the public will
extend to it the favor which it so amply deserves.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WASHINGTON IRVING. By his Nephew, PIERRE M. IRVING.
Vol. I. New-York: G.P. Putnam. Boston: A.K. Loring. 1862.

This work has a strong, we might say an extraordinary claim to the
interest of the most general reader, in its very first paragraph, since
in it we are told that Washington Irving, on committing to his nephew
Pierre the vast mass of papers requisite to his biography, remarked:
'Somebody will be writing my life when I am gone, and I wish you to do
it. You must promise me that you will.' So with unusual wealth of
material, gathered together for the purpose by the subject of the
biography himself, the work has been begun, by the person whom Irving
judged best fitted for it.

And a delightful work it is, not a page without something of special
relish, as might be anticipated in the chronicle of a life which is
thickly studded with personal association or correspondence with almost
every intellectual eminence either of Europe or America during the past
half-century. But apart from this, there is a racy Irving-y flavor from
the very beginning, long before the wide world had incorporated Irving
into its fraternity of great men, in the details of life, of home travel
and of homely incident, as set forth in extracts from his letters, which
is irresistibly charming. Full as this portion of the life is, we can
not resist the hope that it will be greatly enlarged in subsequent
editions, and that more copious extracts will be given from those
letters, to the humblest of which the writer invariably communicates an
indefinable fascination. In them, as in his regular 'writings,' we find
the simplest incident narrated always without exaggeration--always as
briefly as possible, yet told so quaintly and humorously withal, that we
wonder at the piquancy which it assumes. It is the trouble with gre