Butchers and bakers are of course busy under the influx of mouths, and not they alone, for booksellers are 'looking up,' and making proclamation of literary supplies. Some famous names are already announced--Guizot, Grote, and Lord Campbell in matters of history; Washington Irving in a trio of biographies of individuals so opposite in character--Washington, Mohammed, Goldsmith--as to make one imagine that Knickerbocker must have written all three at once, on the principle that change of work is as good as play. Reprints are in force; travels and adventures are not lacking; while fiction is as copious as ever, or more so, for we are promised a re-publication of the works of two well-known writers of romance in shilling and eighteenpenny volumes. Quite a boon this for travelling readers who love the exciting, and patronise railway libraries. Besides these, there is the usual inundation of pocket-books, almanacs, _et id genus omne_, which for a time urges printing-presses into preternatural activity. 'Cooking up an almanac,' as the old song has it, must be a profitable business: the 'throwing off' of that delightful periodical vouched for by 'Francis Moore, physician,' to the extent of hundreds of thousands, is divided among three of our 'city' printers--no small item in the Christmas bill. The wide sale of a work relying on credulity for its success is no compliment to the intelligence of the age; yet, as I myself know, there are hundreds of people, especially in rural districts, who would rather give up fifty pages of their Bible, than forego the almanac with its annual prognostications. Power-presses are kept constantly at work for weeks to supply the multifarious demand. Among other literary gossip is Fredrika Bremer's visit to the United Stales. Perhaps the contrast to Scandinavian manners which she will there perceive, may have the effect of giving her a new inspiration, which by and by will awaken the sympathies of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic and in Northern Europe. Talking of the United States, reminds me that Mr Bancroft has taken up his residence in New York, and intends to devote himself to the completion of his history, in which, like our own Macaulay, he may possibly win higher honours, and effect more lasting good, than in active political life.