This book is exceedingly ingenious, and as brilliant and readable as it is ingenious. The writer is bold to audacity in his criticism on men and on classes, and every page is racy with individual peculiarities. We do not know whether the volume is a scientific joke or not, but the resemblances the author traces between men and animals are often very happy, and seem to point to some occult principle of organization and expression. Hogs, monkeys, cats, hares, foxes, lions, are made to repeat themselves in human heads and countenances with startling effect. The author has given us about a hundred portraits of eminent men and women, with their animal prototypes annexed; and in addition to this he has generalised the shape and expression of whole classes of men into one portrait, and then, putting a pig or a fox by its side, says confidently to the reader, “judge ye.” The book is a very amusing one, even if it have but a fanciful value as regards the leading idea of the author’s theory. * * * * * _Palissy the Potter. The Life of Bernard Palissy, of Saintes; his Labors and Discoveries in Art and Science, etc. By Henry Morley. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 2 vols. 16mo._ The subject of this biography is probably but little known in the United States, though the admirable account of his life and character printed in these elegant volumes, will doubtless make him familiar to many who never before heard his name. He lived an eventful life between the years 1507 and 1589, “one of the obscurely great,” says Mr. Morley, “among the prominently little” of his day. The volumes give an animated picture of the civil and religious discords of France in the sixteenth century, in connection with the narrative of the privations, persecutions, and imprisonments which Palissy underwent on account of his heretical opinions. As regards both powers of mind and honesty of character he was undoubtedly one of the foremost men of his time; and truth owes a debt to his biographer for rescuing his services to art, to science, to religion, and to France, from the oblivion into which they were fast falling. The book has the interest of a romance, and may be classed among the most captivating biographies written during the present century. * * * * * _Village Life in Egypt. With Sketches of the Saïd. By Bayle St. John. Author of “Adventures in the Libyan Desert.” Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 2 vols. 18mo._