The preparation of elaborately illustrated editions of standard poems especially for the holiday trade has become a very prominent feature of the book publishing business.  Every year seems to mark an increased beauty and variety in the work which the artist contributes to these holiday books, and many classic works of literature are read with clearer meaning and vastly greater delight, by reason of the intelligent interpretations often given in the illustrations of our best artists of the day.

Among the most tasteful as well as sumptuous art volumes of the last three years have been James R. Osgood & Co.’s “The Lady of the Lake,” “The Princess,” and “Marmion.”  For a similar book for this season, Messrs, Ticknor & Co., the successors of the old firm, have taken as a subject Lord Byron’s Childe Harold.[6] Of the poem nothing need be said here, for it is universally accepted as Byron’s greatest and best; but of the illustrations, pages of praise could easily be written.  The poem itself has been a fertile theme for the artists, for the scene is made to shift from one to another of the most beautiful and romantic localities of the Rhine, of Spain, Italy and Greece, and most of the illustrations are true representations of castles, ruins, palaces and natural scenery in these ancient countries.

All of the illustrations in the volume are from wood, in the production of which the most famous American artists and engravers have given their best work, all of it having been under the supervision of Mr A.V.S.  Anthony.

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Scarcely a year has elapsed since the appearance of the first volume of Mr. BLAINE’S Twenty Years in Congress, which details the history of our time from the outbreak of Secession to the death of President Lincoln.  To maintain the interest attached to that work, a second and concluding volume ought to have been published ere this.  Indeed, the public had a right to expect it.  But, now, another bid for public consideration and favor has been put forth under the rather attractive title of Three Decades of Federal Legislation.[7] The author is the Hon. S.S.  Cox of New York, at one time a formidable opponent of Mr. BLAINE in the halls of Congress, and at the present time American minister to Turkey.

Mr. COX was a member of Congress for twenty-four years, his four terms from an Ohio district covering the war and the period immediately preceding it.  As a politician, he was always ranked on the Democratic side, and was universally regarded as one of the closest, most competent and most conscientious observer of men and things.  His acknowledged literary skill and his passion for accuracy rendered it almost certain that his history would be both fascinating and truthful.  Contemporary history is at the present moment in high favor.  All intelligent people realize that the records of the last fifty years are of more vital importance to living Americans than are the annals of all previous eras.  Hence, when a man so thoroughly equipped with the gifts of mind and of expression as Mr. Cox has shown himself to be in earlier books from his pen,—­we say when such a man sets out to relate the story of his time, it follows without further argument that his work will not only be sought but will be read.