This is a sprightly book, written in a dashing and defiant style, bristling with paradox and sparkling with whimsicalities. The peculiarity of the book consists in its dogmatism, and like all dogmatists the author gives as confident expression to the extravagances of his caprice as to the deductions of his understanding. Many topics are discussed which the title of the book would never suggest. Such are the remarks on the Puritans, Shakspeare, and the Moors in Spain. With regard to the first, the author chimes in with the opponents of the Puritans, and administers twenty lashes to “New England Conceit.” We do not know but that our Eastern friends have dilated a little too much on their ancestors, and been too prone to consider every thing excellent as dating from the Puritans, but certainly the style in which our New York brethren are now bragging about their progenitors, promises to outshine in pretension and impertinence every thing of the kind we have had in Massachusetts or Virginia. Mr. Hart, especially, fairly crows a note higher than any antiquarian chanticleer of ancestry it has ever been our fortune to meet in literature. There is a long passage in the book on Shakspeare, in which the author attempts to prove that in the plays published under Shakspeare’s name, there is little property belonging to him but the rant and obscenity. If Mr. Hart means his dissertation on this topic as badinage, it is rather tedious joking; and if he is in earnest, he shows a strange ignorance of facts and arguments which are as familiar to every student of English letters as his alphabet. Seriously, to combat such a clumsy specimen of irony would only turn the laugh against the critic, and no honor could possibly be gained in proving that the sun shines, or that “eggs is eggs.” Apart from some extravagances of the kind we have noticed, the book is a grand and exhilarating one, and cannot fail to prove interesting to almost all classes of readers. To seamen, and to all who go out upon the sea in ships or yachts, it is an invaluable companion. The vigor, elasticity and decision of the style are in fine harmony with the frank, cordial, and somewhat chivalric nature of the author. * * * * * _The Great Hoggarty Diamond. By W. M. Thackeray. New York: Harper & Brothers._