The announcement of a new work by the most popular novelist of the day, is quite an event to the famished lovers of his genius. It is difficult to judge from the first number whether it will be worthy of the author’s fame, but it promises well both in respect to originality and interest. With the characteristic traits of Dickens’s style and mode of delineating characters and narrating events, it starts a new society of individuals, who may rival the old familiar names in popularity. The peculiar humor, fancy, sweetness, and verbal felicity, which have already delighted so many thousands, appear in this work with their old power, and give no signs of decay. For knowledge of the heart we would allude to the scene in which Mrs. Copperfield questions Davy as to the exact words the gentleman at Lowestoft used in speaking of her beauty, as pre-eminently excellent. For quaint humor, bordering continually on pathos, the life which Davy led in the queer house on Yarmouth beach, with Peggotty’s relations, might be triumphantly quoted to silence all doubts of Dickens’s continued fertility. The knowledge evinced throughout of the interior workings and external expression of a child’s mind, is quite remarkable. Indeed, if the author proceeds as he has commenced, there can be little fear of his success. It remains, however, to be seen, whether or not his characters will please through twenty numbers. * * * * * _Holydays Abroad; or Europe from the West. By Mrs. Kirkland. New York: Baker & Scribner. 2 vols. 12mo._ The accomplished authoress of these elegant volumes has established so good a reputation by her previous writings, that we opened her present book with some reluctance, fearing that the subject would be too threadbare even for her powers to make interesting. Indeed records of tours in Europe have become so common, so natural an employment of aspiring mediocrity, that to read them is an exercise in yawning, and to criticise them an assumption of the office of executioner. We prefer dullness in almost any other form. It is due to Mrs. Kirkland, however, to acknowledge that she has triumphed over the disadvantages of her subject, and produced a really interesting work, avoiding all the wearisome topographical inanities and stereotyped opinions of most tourists, and giving a new and vivid glimpse of foreign life. She appears to understand the wants of her readers, and she tells them the very things they most desire to know. Her passage on St. Peter’s is one instance among many which the book affords, of her knowledge of the ignorance of her readers, and her felicity in suggesting a view of a whole subject by fixing on a few important details. She generally succeeds in conveying so warm an impression of the objects she describes, as to make her readers the companions in the journey. * * * * *