Ah! within those cloisters gloomy, dimly wastes the midnight oil-- Days of penury and sorrow alternate with nights of toil! Countless crowds those portals enter, breathing aspirations high-- Youthful, ardent, self-reliant--each believing triumph nigh; Countless crowds grow wan and weary, and within those portals die! Ay, of all who enter thither, few obtain the proffered prize, While unblest, unwept, unhonored, undeveloped genius dies! Genius which had else its glory on remotest ages shown-- Beamed through History’s deathless pages, glowed on canvas, lived in stone-- Yet along Ambition’s way-side, fills it many a grave unknown! But, perchance thou pinest only for those grottoes old and hoar, In whose deep recesses hidden, Fortune heaps her glittering store: Enter, then, the dreary pathway--but, above each lonely mound Lightly tread, and pause to ponder--for, like those who slumber round, Thou mayst also lie forgotten on Ambition’s burial ground! * * * * * =REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.= _The Upper Ten Thousand. By Charles Astor Bristed. Stringer & Townsend, Broadway._ A very clever book, by a rather clever man. We learn it is the most popular _brochure_ of the season, nor do we wonder at it, for it has all the elements to procure it a fleeting popularity--pungency, personality, impudence, insolence, ill-nature, satire and slang, malignity and mendacity--every thing, in short, likely to tickle the palates of all classes, to pander to the worst tastes, please the worst passions, and gratify the self-adulation of all readers. It is not to be denied that the descriptions are racy and pointed; that some caste-affectations are skillfully satirized; some local absurdities happily shown up; and that there are some points of humor, and even some sound criticisms, mixed up with much grossness, much ill taste, most disgusting egotism, and personality the most broad, brutal, and malign.