Two of the most exquisitely finished and delightful works that have come before our eyes in years, have lately been reproduced from the English press by two of our New York publishers, without any hint in regard to authorship, or indeed to the aim and nature of the books, whether fact or fiction. Their names stand above, and the personages to whom they have relation will be recognized as the great and good chancellor of Henry VIII., barbarously and illegally put to death for his refusal to take the oath of supremacy, and for his opposition to the unjust divorce of Katharine and marriage of the king with Anne Boleyn; and as the unhappy wife of that greatest of poets, but sternest and most impracticable of husbands, John Milton. No hint, as I have observed, is given as to authorship, but it is I think impossible that we shall be mistaken in ascribing both to the same pen; for, although the wielder of that pen has chosen to maintain an absolute incognito, his mark—though I am not altogether clear that for _his_ we might not better read _her_—is not to be confounded with that of any other; nor do we recognize any other in England or America at all comparable to this. In both works we find the same delicate and delicious freshness, like the perfume from a rich clover-field after a summer shower; the same truthfulness to nature; the same intimate acquaintance with the spirit of the times, the character and circumstances of the supposed writers; the same natural and artless pathos; the same simplicity, and, if I may so speak of writing evidently fictitious, the same authenticity and genuineness of style. So perfect indeed is the skill and tact of the handling, and so admirably is the whole character of either work kept up, that it cannot be doubted, had they been put forth as genuine ancient memoirs, recovered by any accident you will, their success as forgeries would have been as complete as that very remarkable—but to me very dull—book, “The Amber Witch” of the Pastor Meinhold, or the supposititious letters of Shelley and other notables of the nineteenth century, which have recently created so much wonder and excitement in the literary world. What is to me, however, even more remarkable than the excellence of these chaste and unpretending little fictions, is the total absence of bruit or loud encomium with which they have issued both from the English and American presses; for in good sooth we have hardly heard them named, while they are in every respect the cleverest and most highly wrought, and in their own line the very best fictitious works that we have seen in years.