“My Judas, whom I hope to see, When my last treason has been done, Dear as the rowdy to the dun, More than my bottle is to me.” There are some spirited lines in the parody of Macaulay’s Armada, and some felicity in the measure of “The Eagle,” a poem after the manner of Poe’s Raven; but the rich materials of the general subject for vitriolic satire and riotous humor, are very imperfectly used. The Prince President is the most accomplished rascal that Europe has yet produced, fertile as she has been in reprobate politicians, and he deserves a Juvenal. There is a meanness about his most vigorous actions which will prevent his being ranked high among the world’s tyrants. He is essentially a robber and ruffian, and his coup d’etat was a piece of brilliant rascality which would have reflected great credit on a captain of a gang of highwaymen. He has not yet performed a single action which indicates a capacity in his nature to rise above vulgar perjury and murder into splendid crime. * * * * * _Ingoldsby Legends; Or Mirth and Marvels. By Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq. (the Rev. Richard Harris Barhaw.) First Series. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 16mo._ It is strange that these curious pieces have not been reprinted before. Few contributions to periodical literature, during the present century, are so unmistakably original, and so irresistibly ludicrous, as these legendary audacities; and they are all the more notable from the fact that their author was a clergyman, and passed through life with the reputation of being a pious one. Their chief characteristic is irreverence, not only as regards divine things, but in respect to the sanctities of human life. Indeed, their comic effect results, in a great degree, from the electric shocks of surprise caused by their recklessness, the author’s wit being nothing if not untamed. A spice of the Satanic is in every legend. A mischievousness, which is literally _devilish_ good, plays its wild pranks even with horrors, and impishly extracts fantastical farce out of tragedy. The author’s fancy is a worthy instrument of his tricksy disposition, and is ever ready with queer images and quaint analogies, to support his most venturesome caricatures of sin, death, and the devil. His learning, also, is very great, especially in departments of literature which are unfamiliar to ordinary students, such as old treatises on magic, witchcraft, and astrology, and the like; and this, under the direction of his wit, increases the grotesque effect of his legends. As the result of all these qualities and acquirements we have the most audacious wit of the age, and one of its greatest masters of versification. * * * * *