We are glad to see an elegant American edition of these humorous ballads. In England they have long enjoyed a wide reputation. Their authorship, though vehemently debated, has not yet been settled, although the honor is now considered to lie between Theodore Martin and Professor W. E. Aytoun, the editor of Blackwood’s Magazine. Bon Gaultier, whoever he may be, is an universal satirist, whose sharp things are steeped in a riotous humor that leaps all bounds of conventional restraint. The general idea of the work is a parody of the various styles of contemporary authors, and a caricature of manners and persons, and this is executed with great felicity of imitative talent, and in a spirit of such wild glee as to take away the offensiveness of its occasional malice. The Spanish Ballads, amid all their elaborate buffoonery, are grand imitations of Lockhart’s celebrated translations, evincing uncommon command of energetic expression, and a keen perception of the chivalrous spirit of the originals, and indicating in the writer a ballad talent almost equal to that displayed by Aytoun in his “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers.” The American Ballads are gross but laughable caricatures, in which gouging, spitting, bragging, and drinking, are made leading national characteristics, and the government of the country represented as residing in an aristocracy of the bowie-knife. The following, from the American’s Apostrophe to Boz, contains an inimitable antithesis of sentiment. Much we bore and much we suffered, listening to remorseless spells Of that Smike’s unceasing drivelings, and those ever-lasting Nells. _When you talked of babes and sunshine, fields, and all that sort of thing,_ _Each Columbian inly chuckled, as he slowly sucked his sling._ The best of the American ballads is “The Death of Jabez Dollar,” originally published in Frazer’s Magazine, and founded on a newspaper report of one of our Congressional affrays. The caricature is so broad that the most patriotic American can hardly take offense, and we quote it as a splendid specimen, in versification and sentiment, of the heroic in ruffianism; The Congress met, the day was wet, Van Buren took the chair, On either side, the statesman pride of far Kentuck was there; With moody frown, there ate Calhoun, and slowly in his cheek His quid he thrust, and slaked the dust, as Webster rose to speak. Upon that day, near gifted Clay, a youthful member sat, _And like a free American upon the floor he spat;_ Then turning round to Clay, he said, and wiped his manly chin, “What kind of Locofoco’s that, as wears the painter’s skin?” “Young man,” quoth Clay, “avoid the way of Slick of Tennessee, Of gougers fierce, the eyes that pierce, the fiercest gouger he. He chews and spits, as there he sits, and whittles at the chairs, And in his hand, for deadly strife, a bowie-knife he bears.