Zwar glaenzt die Sonne ueberall Dem Menschen in der Welt; Doch we zuerst ihr goldner Strahl Ihm in das Auge faellt? Wo er als Kind, Sanft und gelind, An muetter Hand, Sprach und empfand, Da ist allein sein Vaterland Koennt' ich's noch einmal seh'n? REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS. _Edith Kinnaird, By the Author of "The Maiden Aunt." Boston: E. Littell & Co._ Fiction has exercised an important influence over the public from the earliest ages of the world. Nor is the reason difficult to determine. Where one man takes delight in the subtleties of logic, ten derive pleasure from the indulgence of the fancy. The love of fiction is common to the unlettered savage as well as to the civilized European, and has marked alike the ancient and the modern world. The oldest surviving book, if we except the narrative of Moses, is, perhaps, a fiction--we mean the book of Job. To reach its date we must go back beyond the twilight of authentic history, far into the gloom of the antique past, to the very earliest periods of the earth's existence. We must ascend to the time when the Assyrian empire was yet in its youth, when the patriarchs still fed their flocks on the hills of Palestine, when the memory of the visible presence of the Almighty among men remained fresh in the traditions of the East. The beautiful story of Ruth comes next, but ages later than its predecessor. Then follows the sonorous tale of Homer, clanging with a martial spirit that will echo to all time. Descending to more modern eras, we reach the legends of Haroun El Reschid; the tales of the Provencal troubadours; the romances of chivalry; and finally the novels of this and the past century. For nearly four thousand years fiction has delighted and moulded mankind. It has survived, too, when all else has died. The Chaldean books of astrology are lost to the moderns; but the story of the Idumean has reached us unimpaired. The lawgivers of Judah are no more, and the race of Abraham wanders over the earth; but the simple tale of Ruth preserves the memory of their customs, and keeps alive the glory of the past.