We have not space to follow him farther, and only the reputation of the man, and the singularity of the occasion, which gave a kind of national significance to the affair, would have tempted us to intrude upon the select privacy of the Young Men’s Democratic Association.

Finally, as Mr. Choate appears to have a very mean opinion of the understandings and the culture of those opposed to him in politics, we beg to remind him, since he has been led out, like Balaam, to prophesy against the tents and armies of the Republican Israel, and has ended by proving their invincibility, that it was an animal in all respects inferior to a prophet, and in some to a politician, who was first aware of the presence of the heavenly messenger; and it may be that persons incapable of a generalization—­as that patient creature undoubtedly was—­may see as far into the future as the greatest philosopher who turns his eyes always to the past.

Footnote 1:  We may be allowed to wonder, however, at his speaking of “memories that burn and revel in the pages of Herodotus,”—­a phrase which does injustice to the simple and quiet style of the delightful Pepys of Antiquity.

LITERARY NOTICES.

DR. ASA GRAY’S Botanical Series, New York, Ivison & Phinney, consisting of—­

I. How Plants Grow, etc., with a Popular Flora, etc. 16mo. pp. 233.

II. First Lessons in Botany and Vegetable Physiology. 8vo. pp. 236.

III. Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany and Vegetable Physiology. 8vo. pp. 555.

IV. Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, including Virginia, Kentucky, etc. 8vo. pp. 636.

V. Same as IV., with the Mosses and Liverworts added, illustrated by Engravings, pp. 739.

VI.  Same as IV., with II. bound up with it. pp. 872.

The first-named of these books is a new candidate for public favor; the others are revised and improved editions of books which have already been favorably received.  We have sometimes thought that the popularity of a school-book is in inverse proportion to its merits, and are glad to learn that five editions of Dr. Gray’s “Structural and Systematic Botany” are witnesses against the truth of this assumption.  No man can deny that Dr. Gray’s books are all of the highest order of merit.  The accuracy and extent of his scholarship are manifest on every page,—­a scholarship consisting not merely in an extensive acquaintance with the works of other botanists, but in a careful confirmation of their results, and in additions to their knowledge, by an observation of Nature for himself.  His clearness of style is an equally valuable characteristic, making the reader sure that he understands Dr. Gray, and that Dr. Gray understands the subject.  In the “Manual” this clearness of style extends to the judicious selection of distinctive marks, whereby