Private letters from England confirm the reports in the public journals of the great sensation which this work has excited in Great Britain. It divides with Macaulay’s brilliant history the attention of the reading public. The American publisher, with commendable enterprise, has issued it in a style of great elegance, and has given all the illustrative engravings which decorate the English edition. The work, when we consider the expense of its mechanical execution, is placed at a very low price. These volumes belong to a class of books which may be called the geology of history—the exhibition of a nation’s history and social life through its monuments. The greatest work of this kind in English is doubtless Wilkinson’s on the Ancient Egyptians, and the production of Mr. Layard is next in rank. It introduces us to the Assyrians through a process which enables us to comprehend their material and mental life—to see them as they ate, dressed, warred, thought and prayed. Their fine and useful arts, their costume, their amusements, their military system, their private life, their religion, are all brought directly before the eye and mind of the reader, and he is enabled to discern that peculiar combination of the elements of human nature which constituted the Assyrian mind and heart, and to reconcile the apparent anomalies in the national character. The picture is one of engrossing interest, and cannot fail to enlarge every mind which contemplates it. It is almost needless to say that the course Mr. Layard has pursued is the only possible mode by which authentic information can be obtained of an extinct people, who left no historical records, and who were almost forgotten before history began. The illustrations given in the work of the truth of many passages in the Old Testament, are not the least interesting and remarkable portions of a most interesting and striking book. * * * * * _The Gold Mines of the Gila. A Sequel to Old Hicks the Guide. By Charles W. Webber. New York: Dewitt & Davenport. 2 vols. 12mo._