“Italy from the Fall of Napoleon I., in 1815, to the Death of Victor Emanuel, in 1878,” by John Webb Probyn, is just ready from the press of Cassell & Company. In noticing this important work we can do no better than to quote from the author’s preface. “The purpose of this volume,” writes Mr. Probyn, “is to give a concise account of the chief causes and events which have transformed Italy from a divided into a united country. A detailed history of this important epoch would fill volumes, and will not be written for some time to come. Yet it is desirable that all who are interested in the important events of our time should be able to obtain some connected account of so striking a transformation as that which was effected in Italy between the years 1815 and 1878. It has been with the object of giving such an account that this volume has been written.” Mr. Probyn lived in Italy among the Italians while this struggle was going on, and he writes from a close knowledge of his subject. HARRIET MARTINEAU (FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES). By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. Boston: _Roberts Brothers_. The distinguished woman who forms the subject of this biography is less known and read in America than she should be, and it is to be hoped that this concise, lucid and well-written account of her life and work will awaken interest in one whose literary labors will merit perusal and study. Miss Martineau was one of the precursors of that movement for the larger life and mental liberty of her sex, which to-day has assumed formidable proportions, and indulged, we need hardly say, many strange vagaries. Miss Martineau began to write at an early age and soon began to impress herself on the public mind, though it was for a long time suspected that she was a man. The whole tone of her mind and intellectual sympathies was eminently masculine, though on the emotional and moral side of her nature she was intensely feminine. An early love disappointment, as has been the case with not a few literary women, shut her out from that circle of wifehood and motherhood in which she would have been far more happy than she was ordained to be by fate. Yet the world would have been a loser, so true is it that it is often by virtue of those conditions which sacrifice happiness that the most precious fruits of life are bestowed on the world. It would be interesting to follow the literary career of Miss Martineau, if space permitted, as her life was not only rich in its own results but interwoven with the most aggressive, keen and significant literary life of her age. To the world at large Miss Martineau, who had a philosophical mind of the highest order, is best known as the translator of Comte, of whose system she was an enthusiastic advocate. Her translation of Comte’s ponderous “Positive Philosophy,” published in French in six volumes, which she condensed into three volumes of lucid and forcible English, is not merely a masterpiece of translation, but a monument of acumen.