must be; while the remaining pages, devoted to
study of the Earl's character, do not develop much that is new in
literature or humanity. Still, the story has its charm: it is healthful,
unaffected, and hopeful; and most people will read it through, and be
better for having done so.

_Literature in Letters; or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History,
and Morals, illustrated in the Correspondence of Eminent Persons._
Edited by JAMES HOLCOMBE, LL. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.

The very comprehensive title of this work leaves us little to say in
explanation of its purpose, and we can only speak in compliment of the
taste with which the editor has performed a not very arduous task. As a
matter of course, the famous epistles of Lady Mary Wortley Montague,
Pope, Horace Walpole, Madame de Sevigne, Miss Burney, Lady Russell, and
Hannah More go to form a large part of the collection; but Mr. Holcombe
has drawn from other sources epistolary material of interest and value,
and has performed a service to literature by including in his book the
occasional letters of great men not addicted to letter-writing, but no
doubt as natural and true to themselves and their time as habitual
letter-writers. It is curious to note the deterioration in the artistic
quality of the letters as the period of their production approaches our
own, when people dash off their correspondence rapidly and incoherently,
instead of bestowing upon it the artifice and care which distinguished
the epistolarians of an elder date, whose letters, fastidiously written,
faithfully read, and jealously kept and shown about in favored circles,
supplied the place of newspapers. The lowest ebb of indifference seems
to be reached in a letter by Daniel Webster, written from Richmond, and
devoted to some very commonplace and jejune praises of morning and early
rising. Except as an instance of our epistolary degeneracy, we could
hardly wish it to have a place in Mr. Holcombe's collection, which is
otherwise so judiciously made.

_The Criterion; or the Test of Talk about Familiar Things. A Series of
Essays._ By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866.

Mr. Tuckerman's books, if they possess no great value as works of
original thought, are characterized by the hardly less desirable quality
of unfailing good taste. He has a quiet and meditative way of treating
those topics of literature and art with which he chiefly loves to deal,
and has much in h