A work evincing strong practical common sense, and acute discrimination. Our author is a poet, but no mysticism or sentimentalism disfigures his pages; he is a clear, keen observer and analyzer of human nature, lashing its vices, discerning its foibles, and reading its subterfuges and petty vanities. He says: 'The only apologies which he offers for appearing as a censor and a teacher, are his love of men, his honest wish to do them good, and his sad consciousness that his nominal criticisms of others are too often actual condemnations of himself.'

He addresses himself in a series of letters to the Joneses of Jonesville, each Jones addressed being a typal character and such as is of frequent occurrence in our midst. Homely and excellent advice, appropriate to their faults and needs, is administered to each individual Jones in turn, as he falls under the salutary but sharp scalpel of this keen dissector. There are twenty-four letters, consequently twenty-four studies from life, true to reality and detailed as a Dutch picture. We feel our own faults and foibles bared before us as we read. While these pages are very interesting to the general reader, the divine may learn from them how best in his preaching to aim his shafts at personal follies, and the novelist find models for his living portraitures and varied pictures.

The Water Babies: a Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley, Author of 'Two Years Ago,' 'Amyas Leigh,' etc. With illustrations by J. Noel Paten, B. S. A. Boston: T. O. H. P. Burnham. New York: O. S. Felt, 36 Walker St., 1864.

A lively tale, dedicated to the author's youngest son, and calculated to entertain the elders who read aloud, as well as the children who listen. There are in it many tender touches, and numberless satiric blows administered in Mr. Kingsley's own peculiar way.

Adventures of Dick Onslow Among the Red Skins. A Book for Boys. With Illustrations. Edited by William H. G. Kingston. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1864.

Stories of the Western wilderness, and of life among the Indians, are sure to meet with favor in the eyes of American boys, the descendants of a race of pioneers.

My Days and Nights on the Battle Field. A Book for Boys. By 'Carleton.' Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

This is a useful book, containing sundry items of military information, and many vivid descriptions of land and naval engagements during the present war—all interesting to young people.

Louie's Last Term at St. Mary's. By the author of 'Rutledge,' 'The Sutherlands,' 'Frank Warrington,' etc. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway, 1864.

A book of school life, intended not less for teachers than for the youthful maidens whose various typal forms act, love, hate, and suffer through its very natural and interesting pages.

Milton's Paradise Lost. In Twelve Books. New York: Frank H. Dodd, 506 Broadway, 1863.

The text is a literal reprint from Keightley's Library edition. Print, binding, and size all render the tasteful little book a pleasant form in which to possess the greatest epic in the English tongue.

The Game of Draughts. By Henry Spayth, Author of 'American Draught Player.' Buffalo: Printed for the Author. For sale by Sinclair Tousey, New York.

This book has been pronounced by the highest authorities on checkers, both in the Old and New World, the best work of the kind ever written. It is said to contain 'lucid instructions for beginners, laws of the game, diagrams, the score of 364 games, together with a series of novel, instructive, and ingenious critical positions.'

[Continuation of Literary Notices prepared for the present issue unavoidably crowded out; they will however appear in our next number.]

1

Since the above was written, the speech of Earl Russell, in Scotland, indicates a disposition on the part of the British Government to do us justice, at least in the future; and it is to be hoped that a satisfactory adjustment of all differences on the whole matter may be peacefully made.

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2

In the 'Letters to Professor Morse,' in the November number of The Continental, a sentence on page 521, relating to the Confiscation Law, was left incomplete. The whole sentence should have been as follows: 'As to the Confiscation Acts—it is enough to say that the Constitution gives Congress power 'to declare the punishment of treason';—or if the constitutionality of the Confiscation law cannot be concluded from the terms of that grant—about which there may be a doubt—it is undoubtedly contained in the war powers vested in Congress.'

I have here put in italics the clause omitted in that article, and hope my readers will insert it in the proper place. The sentence, as thus completed, contains all I cared then to say on the point—my object being mainly to vindicate the justice and conformity to public law of the policy of confiscation. In the present article I have gone more at length into the question of the constitutionality of the law of Congress, and have come to the conclusions herein expressed.

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