[1] See 'The Rudimental,' in No. 391. [2] A paper on this subject will be found in _Chambers's Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts_, vol. v. No. 48. [3] See 'Gang-Robbers of India,' in Nos. 360 and 361 of this Journal. The title of the pamphlet alluded to is, _An Account of Wolves nurturing Children in their Dens_. By an Indian Official. Plymouth: Jenkin Thomas, printer. 1852. THE LITERATURE OF PARLIAMENT. The Imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, in addition to its other varied and important functions, fulfils, through one of its branches, that of a great national book manufactory. Every session, the House of Commons issues a whole library of valuable works, containing information of the most ample and searching kind on subjects of a very miscellaneous character. These are the Blue-books, of which everybody has heard: many jokes are extant as to their imposing bulk and great weight, literally and figuratively; and a generation eminently addicted to light reading, may well look with horror on these thick and closely-printed folios. But, in truth, they are not for the mere _reader_: they are for the historian, and student of any given subject; they are storehouses of material, not digested treatises. True it is, that their great size sometimes defeats its object--the valuable portion of the material is sometimes buried under the comparatively worthless heap that surrounds it--the golden grains lost amid the chaff. But in a case of this kind, the error of redundancy is one on the safe side; let a subject in all its bearings be thoroughly and fully brought up, and it is the fault or failing of him who sets about the study of it, if he is appalled at the amount of information on which he has to work, or cannot discriminate and seize upon the salient points, or on those which are necessary for his own special purposes.