"These letters attracted not a little attention at the Hub for their audacity in kicking over the classic styles and violating all the established dogmas of dignity and lofty intellectuality. They are a reaction from the strain and intensity of ordinary Boston life, and thus supply a clearly defined want. This explains their local popularity, and gives, also, a reason why the outside world should turn the pages of the book as a sort of mirror reflecting a phase of Boston culture. It purports to be written by a woman, but there are indications that the character is assumed."--_New York Home Journal._ "This bright series of amusing comments on characteristic failings of the last decade ... are supposed to be the weekly budgets of news written by a young girl in Boston to a dear friend in Venice.... 'Emergency lectures,' fashionable religion, amateur cooking, horse-car politeness, servants, summer hotels, symphony concerts, and other Boston topics are wittily touched upon, and the frailty of human nature, especially of feminine human nature, is most mercilessly exposed in the various phases which they suggest."--_The Commercial Bulletin._ =TICKNOR AND COMPANY, BOSTON.= * * * * * LIFE OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Edited by REV. SAMUEL LONGFELLOW. 2 vols. 12mo. With 5 new steel-engraved portraits and many wood engravings and fac-similes. In cloth, $6.00; in half calf, with marble edges, $11.00; in half morocco, with gilt top and rough edges, $11.00. "Altogether the most fascinating book that has been published for months. It is full of the most interesting and picturesque and poetic things."--_Boston Record._ "One thinks of the gentle scholar as a man who can never have made an enemy, or lost a friend; and we lay down his autobiography (for such the book can fairly be called) with a feeling that in these posthumous pages he has opened a view of his own soul as beautiful as the creations of his fancy."--_New York Tribune._ "It is an admirable piece of biographical work, and the story of the poet's career gives a view of the growth of American literature that is full of instruction and interest. It is a book that is sure to become a classic both in this country and England, and, indeed, in cultivated circles throughout the world."--_Boston Budget._ "It is needless to add that the publication of these noble volumes is the literary event of the day, that all continents will greet it with delight, and that coming ages will quote it affectionately in recalling that Longfellow was not only a pure and great poet, which is much, but also a pure and great man, which is more."--_The Beacon_ (Boston).