Every year, we believe, the name of Alexander Hamilton is becoming dearer to the American People. The prejudices occasioned by some of his unpopular and perhaps erroneous political opinions are passing away, and all men are beginning to look upon his great qualities and important services with candor, and consequent admiration and gratitude. The volume of his official and other papers before us was edited by the Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D. D. whose known familiarity with early American history fitted him well for the duty. It commences with some letters written while Hamilton was a clerk in a merchant’s counting-house in the island of St. Croix, in 1769. He was then but _thirteen years old_, and his correspondence at this early period is chiefly remarkable as showing that strong reliance on his own resources which was so well vindicated by the after fortunes of the man. The remainder of the book is made up of controversial essays in defence of the measures of the continental Congress and of the steps preparatory to the Revolution, and of his military and private correspondence down to the close of the year 1780. A few of the letters have before been published. Almost every one has read the admirable account of the arrest and fate of Andre, which he addressed to his friend Laurens. It is not surpassed in interest or pathos by any narrative of the circumstances, in prose or verse, by historian or novelist, that has appeared. General Hamilton was an accomplished gentleman and a brave soldier, but his fame, as “the second man of the republic,” rests on his achievements as a statesman, and the succeeding volume of these papers, to embrace the period from 1780 to 1793, will contain matters of far more general and profound interest than the one before us. The task of Dr. Hawks has been little more than that of compilation; he but arranged the papers in chronological order and added occasionally a note; thinking that the recently published life of General Hamilton by his son, John C. Hamilton, rendered a biographical notice unnecessary. We think he erred: there are among us but few such _character-writers_ as the historian of the Church in America, and an extended introduction to the work, from his pen, would have added much to its value. * * * * * _The Book of the Poets: The Poets of the Nineteenth Century. London, Scott, Webster, & Co. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart._