are very old truths, and they contain the precepts which we all
know and neglect. Except that the present preacher was qualified to
illustrate them with original force and clearness, he might well have
left them untouched. As it is, however, we think that every one who
reads a page in the book will learn to honor the faculty that presents
them. It is not because Mr. Beecher reproves hatred, false-witness,
lust, envy, and covetousness, that he is so successful in his office. We
all do this, and dislike sin in our neighbors; but it is his power of
directly reproving these evils in each one of us that gives his words so
great weight. He of course does this by varying means and with varying
effect. Here we have detached passages from many different
discourses,--not invariably selected with perfect judgment, but
affording for this reason a better idea of his range and capacity. That
given is not always of his best; but, for all this, it may have been the
best for some of those who heard it. In the changing topics and style of
the innumerable extracts in this volume, we find passages of pure
sublimity, of solemn and pathetic eloquence, of flower-like grace and
sweetness, followed by exhortations apparently modelled upon those of
Mr. Chadband, but doubtless comforting and edifying to Mrs. Snagsby in
the congregation, and not, we suppose, without use to Mrs. Snagsby in
the parlor where she sits down to peruse the volume on Sunday afternoon.
For according to the story which Mr. Beecher tells his publishers in a
very pleasant prefatory letter, this compilation was made in England,
where it attained great popularity among those who never heard the
preacher, and who found satisfaction in the first-rate or the
second-rate, without being moved by the arts of oratory. Indeed, the
book is one that must everywhere be welcome, both for its manner and for
its matter. The application of the "Truths" is generally enforced by a
felicitous apologue or figure; in some cases the lesson is conveyed in a
beautiful metaphor standing alone. The extracts are brief, and the
point, never wanting, is moral, not doctrinal.

_The Language of Flowers._ Edited by MISS ILDREWE. Boston:
De Vries, Ibarra, & Co.

Margaret Fuller said that everybody liked gossip, and the only
difference was in the choice of a subject. A bookful of gossip about
flowers--their loves and hates, thoughts and feelings, genealogy and
cousinships--is certainly always attr