has been lamed irretrievably for steady and lofty flight by toppling out into the helpless void of opinion with wings yet callow.  The gross and carnal hallucinations of what is called “Spiritualism”—­the weakest-kneed of all whimsies that have come upon the parish from the days of the augurs down to our own—­would be disenchanted at once in a neighborhood familiar with Del Rio, Wierus, Bodin, Scot, Glanvil, Webster, Casaubon, and the Mathers.  Good books are the enemies of delusion, the most effectual extinguishers of self-conceit.  Impersonal, dispassionate, self-possessed, they reason without temper, and remain forever of the same mind without obstinacy.  The man who has the freedom of a great library lengthens his own life without the weariness of living; he may include all past generations in his experience without risk of senility; not yet fifty, he may have made himself the contemporary of “the world’s gray fathers”; and with no advantages of birth or person, he may have been admitted to the selectest society of all times and lands.

We live in the hope of seeing, if not a great library somewhere on this continent, at least the foundations of such a one, laid broad enough and deep enough to change hope into a not too remote certainty.  Hitherto America has erected but one statue in commemoration of a scholar, and we cannot help wishing that the money that has been wasted in setting up in effigy one or two departed celebrities we could mention had been appropriated to a means of culture which, perhaps more than any other, would be likely to give us men worthy of bronze or marble, but above the necessity of them for memory.

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RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.

The Poetical Works of William Motherwell; with a Memoir of his Life.  Fourth Edition, greatly Enlarged.  Boston.  Ticknor & Fields. 32mo. pp. 308. 75 cts.

The Avenger, a Narrative; and other Papers.  By Thomas De Quincey.  Boston.  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 327. 75 cts.

Life of William Pitt.  By Lord Macaulay.  Preceded by the Life of the Earl of Chatham.  New York.  Delisser & Proctor. 32mo. pp. 227. 50 cts.

Shakspeare’s Legal Acquirements Considered.  By John Lord Campbell, LL.D., F.R.S.E.  In a Letter to J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A.  New York.  D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 146. 75 cts.

The Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage.  By Rev. J.H.  Ingraham, Author of “The Prince of the House of David.”  New York.  Pudney & Russell. 12mo. pp. 600. $1.25.

The Life of North American Insects.  By B. Jaeger, Assisted by H.E.  Preston, M.D.  With Numerous Illustrations from Specimens in the Cabinet of the Author.  New York.  Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 319. $1.25.

Life of Frederick the Great.  By Macaulay.  New York.  Delisser & Proctor. 32mo. pp. 277. 50 cts.

Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic.  By Sir William Hamilton, Bart.  Edited by the Rev. Henry Longueville Mansel, B.D., Oxford, and John Veitch, M.A., Edinburgh. 2 vols.  Vol.  I. Metaphysics.  Boston.  Gould & Lincoln. 8vo. pp. 718. $3.00.