We have examined carefully most of the libraries of any consequence in the United States, and know something of their condition. Small as they are, compared with the libraries of Europe, they are made up in a great degree of duplicate copies of worthless books, and are most poorly supplied with works by our countrymen or relating to our history and institutions. They are managed by persons incompetent to discharge their duties; have librarians who cannot comprehend the title pages of half the books mentioned in their catalogues; and add very little indeed to the means of obtaining knowledge which have an independent existence. The Astor library will be different. The large amount of money appropriated by its founder, the ability of his actuary, and the system which has been proposed for its government, give promise that we are to have at length the _nucleus_, gradually and surely to be enlarged into a really good American library, to which scholars may resort with such hopes of advantage as now prompt them to visit England, Germany, Spain, or France. * * * * * Mr. Francis J. Grund, our Consul at Bremen, and author of “Aristocracy in America,” “The Americans in their Moral, Social and Political Condition,” etc., has nearly ready for press a work on the state and prospects of Germany, which will be published in a few weeks by Longman, Reese, Orme, Browne & Longman, of London. It will of course be reprinted in this country. * * * * * Doctor Marsh.—We learn with great pleasure that Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, is preparing for publication the writings, religious, philosophic and literary, of the late President Marsh, the greatest American who has died in this decade. * * * * *