Among the various illustrated works which usually grace the beginning of the year, has appeared one which, though of graver and less attractive character than its companions, is likely to occupy a more permanent place on the library shelves. We allude to "Illustrations of Scripture, by an Animal Painter," a work which, whatever its faults or weaknesses, shows at least a singular power of giving reality and interest to scenes which are apt to be but feebly, if at all, brought before the mental vision, in consequence of our familiarity with the words which describe them. The idea of the work is itself sufficiently original. The animals are throughout principal, and the pathos or moral of the passage to be illustrated is developed from its apparently subordinate part in it. Thus the luxury and idolatry of the reign of Solomon are hinted behind a group of "apes and peacocks;" the Deluge is subordinate to the dove; and the healing of the lunatic at Gennesareth to the destruction of the herd of swine. In general, to approach an object from a new point of view is to place it in a clearer light, and perhaps the very strangeness of the treatment in some cases renders the subject more impressive than it could have been made by any more regular method of conception. But, at all events, supposing the studies of the artist to have been chiefly directed to animals, and her power to lie principally in seizing their character, she is to be thanked for filling her sketches of the inferior creatures with so much depth of meaning, and rendering the delineation even of an ape, or a swallow, suggestive of the most solemn trains of thought.