There are yet other ants, such as the workerless _Anergates_, in which the degradation of slaveholding has gone yet further. These wretched creatures are the formican representatives of those Oriental despots who are no longer even warlike, but are sunk in sloth and luxury, and pass their lives in eating bang or smoking opium. Once upon a time, Sir John Lubbock thinks, the ancestors of _Anergates_ were marauding slaveowners, who attacked and made serfs of other ants. But gradually they lost not only their arts but even their military prowess, and were reduced to making war by stealth instead of openly carrying off their slaves in fair battle. It seems probable that they now creep into a nest of the far more powerful slave ants, poison or assassinate the queen, and establish themselves by sheer usurpation in the queenless nest. “Gradually,” says Sir John Lubbock, “even their bodily force dwindled away under the enervating influence to which they had subjected themselves, until they sank to their present degraded condition—weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and apparently nearly extinct, the miserable representatives of far superior ancestors, maintaining a precarious existence as contemptible parasites of their former slaves.” One may observe in passing, that these wretched do-nothings cannot have been the ants which Solomon commended to the favorable consideration of the sluggard; though it is curious that the text was never pressed into the service of defence for the peculiar institution by the advocates of slavery in the South, who were always most anxious to prove the righteousness of their cause by most sure and certain warranty of Holy Scripture.—_Cornhill Magazine._ LITERARY NOTICES. EPISODES OF MY SECOND LIFE. By Antonio Gallenga (Luigi Mariotti). English and American Experiences. Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._ The autobiographer in this case (for the last year has been singularly rich in interesting autobiography) is not in any degree, at least for Americans, an eminent and well-known personage. But, in spite of this, his record of experience and vicissitude is full of interest, and we may almost say fascinating. His threescore years and ten have been crowded with events which, if not in themselves strikingly dramatic, are at least striking in the telling, for he has all the art of an accomplished _raconteur_, simple, direct and vigorous in style, and knowing perfectly when to glide over with little stress, when to put on his color with a vigorous and lavish brush. Mr. Gallenga (this being his true name) was in the latter part of his life a leading correspondent of the London _Times_, having achieved a high reputation in this direction prior to the days of Dr. Russell and Archibald Forbes. His work and position brought him into confidential relations with many of the most important men and events of Europe from 1840 to 1875, and he describes these in a racy fashion which will command attention, we think.