We need not inform the reader that few of the most facile versifiers could have accomplished the task in hours. Bogart nearly always composed with the same rapidity, and his pieces were marked by the liveliest wit and most apposite illustration. Of how many young Americans who, like him, died as the bud of their promise was unfolding, have we heard! “Whom the gods love, indeed die young.” * * * * * The Annuaries.—The Gift may be regarded as a dial by which to learn the progress of the arts in America. The best of our painters and engravers are engaged in its embellishment, and in pictorial beauty as well as literary character every new volume surpasses its predecessor. The Gift for 1843 will be issued in a few days, with pictures from Malbone, Huntington, Inman, Chapman, Sully, and others, and prose and verse by Herbert, Simms, Miss Gould, Mrs. Seba Smith, Mrs. Sigourney, and some half dozen beside. The Token, published for fourteen years in Boston, will not again be issued. * * * * * John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest citizen of the United States, has with enlightened liberality devoted three hundred thousand dollars to the establishment of a public library in New York, an elegant and durable edifice is being built in the most pleasant part of the city for its reception, and Doctor Cogswell, a gentleman of taste and sound learning, is engaged in the purchase of books for it. There are a large number of libraries in America, owned by societies and individuals, but none yet for the _public_, and none that, if they were free like the great libraries of the old world, would be of much use to men of science or letters. To so many of the million as can buy shares in them those of Boston, New York and Philadelphia will afford sufficient means of amusement, but if a man wishes to explore any department of science, moral, political, or historical, and resorts to them, he will soon be compelled to abandon his researches or to go abroad for their prosecution. Indeed, except the library of Congress, which is not half so good as an intelligent _bibliopole_ with the requisite means might make it in six months, there is in this country no collection of books _relating to our own history_ comparable with several collections in England, and for works by American authors, for our national literature, such as it is, the very last place to look is in an American library. Stepping a few days since into an extensive bibliographical establishment in this city, we were shown an order for American books, by catalogue, amounting to several thousand dollars; with great difficulty they had been found among the book-stalls and other out-of-the-way places, and shipped to London, to be added to a collection probably already as large as any existing here, except two or three owned by governments and societies, and a few in the hands of private individuals.