Dale does not appear to have done anything to warrant this “attempt on his life,” being no more remarkable than hundreds of others.  He saw several distinguished men; but of his anecdotes about them we can only quote the old opinion, that the good stories are not new, and the new are not good.  As there is nothing particularly interesting in the subject, so there is no peculiar charm thrown around it by the manner in which Mr. Claiborne has executed his task.  A noticeable and very comic feature is presented in the praises which he has interpolated, when ever any acquaintance of his is referred to.  We readily acquiesce, when we are told that Mr. A is a model citizen, and that Mr. B is alike unsurpassed in public and private life; but the latter statement becomes less intensely gratifying when we learn the fact that Mr. C also has no superior, and that there are no better or abler men than D, E, F, or G. We were aware that Mississippi was uncommonly fortunate in having meritorious sons, but not that so singularly exact an equality existed among them.  Are they all best?  It is like the case of the volunteer regiment in which they were all Major-Generals.  Occasional eminence we can easily believe, but a table-land of merit is more than we are prepared for; and we are strongly led to suspect that praise so lavishly given may be cheaply won.

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The Money-King and Other Poems.  By JOHN G. SAXE.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

We regret having overlooked this pleasant volume so long.  In a previous collection of poems, which has run through fifteen editions, Mr. Saxe fully established his popularity; and the present volume, which is better than its predecessor, has in it all the elements of a similar success.  The two longest poems, “The Money-King” and “The Press,” have been put to the severe test of repeated delivery before lyceum audiences in different parts of the country; and a poet is sure to learn by such a method of publication, what he may not learn by an appearance in print, the real judgment of the miscellaneous public on his performance.  He may doubt the justice of the praise or the censure of the professional critic; but it is hard for him to resist the fact of failure, when it comes to him palpably in the satire that scowls in an ominous stare and the irony that lurks in an audible yawn,—­hard for him to question the reality of triumph, when teeth flash at every gleam of his wit and eyes moisten at every touch of his sentiment.  Having tried each of these poems before more than a hundred audiences, Mr. Saxe has fairly earned the right to face critics fearlessly; and, indeed, the poems themselves so abound in sense, shrewdness, sagacity, and fancy, in sayings so pithy and wit so sparkling, are so lull of humor and good-humor, and flow on their rhythmic and rhyming way with so much of the easy abandonment of vivacious conversation, that few critics will desire to reverse the favorable decisions of the audiences they have enlivened.