Moorish romance.  It has also been an object to introduce to the acquaintance of the reader a people who have played a most important part in the world’s history, but of whom very few educated people know anything more than the name.  As Dr. Mayo has traveled extensively over the regions he describes, we presume that his descriptions may be taken as true.  His account of the Berbers, a tribe of ancient Asiatic origin, who inhabit a range of the Atlas, and who live a semi-savage life like the Arabs, is minute, and to the intelligent reader quite as interesting as the more narrative parts of the work.  It is, perhaps, the best evidence of the merits of the book, that the whole first edition was exhausted by orders from the country before the first number had appeared in the city.”

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Col.  Forbes, who was in Italy during the revolution, and many years previous, and who was himself, both in a military and civic capacity, one of the actors in that event, the Evening Post informs us, is about to give public lectures on the subject of Italy in the various cities and towns of the United States.  Col.  Forbes was intimately connected with the revolutionary chiefs during the brief existence of the Roman Republic, and was directly and confidently employed by Mazzini.  His knowledge of the country, its people, its politics, and its recent history, will supply him with materials for making his lectures highly interesting and instructive.

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The Gem of the Western World, edited by Mrs. Hewitt, and published by Cornish & Co., Fulton street, is a very beautiful gift-book, and in its literary character is deserving of a place with the most splendid and; tasteful annuals of the season.  Mrs. Hewitt’s own contributions to it embrace some of her finest compositions, and are of course among its most brilliant contents.

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FRENCH PERIODICALS.—­A Parisian correspondent of the London Literary Gazette observes, that if we exclude the Revue des Deux Mondes—­a, sort of cross between the English Quarterly and the monthlies,—­if we exclude also a few dry scientific periodicals, and one or two theatrical or musical newspapers, we shall seek in vain for any Quarterly, or Blackwood, or Art Union, or Literary Gazette; and that even the periodicals and journals which make the nearest approach to the weekly, monthly, or quarterly publications of England, are either wretched compilations, or abominably ill-written and ill-printed.  The feuilleton system of the newspapers is no doubt the principal cause of the periodical literature being in such an extremely low condition.  But though literary and scientific periodicals be, generally speaking, vile in quality, they can at least boast of quantity.  There are, it seems, not fewer than 300 of one kind or another