_Dante’s Divine Comedy: The Inferno. A Literal Prose Translation, with the Text of the Original Collated from the Best Editions, and Explanatory Notes. By John A. Carlyle, M. D., New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._ This is a most valuable addition to the English translations of the Italian Classics, and is well calculated to convey a vivid impression of the intense beauty and sublimity of Dante’s immortal poem to readers ignorant of the original. The translation is faithful even to literal exactness without being clumsy and inelegant, and the Italian text has been collated with commendable care and industry. Indeed the whole book appears to have been a labor of love, and must have occupied the leisure of many years. To those who are learning Italian the volume must be invaluable, as it enables them to read the original side by side with a translation at once correct and elegant. Dr. Carlyle, the translator, is the brother of Thomas Carlyle. One would suppose that being so nearly related to the latter, he would sedulously avoid all imitation of his manner, yet the preface to the present volume is filled with the most amusing _Carlylisms_. The tone and rhetorical contortions of his brother, Dr. Carlyle mimics rather than imitates, and makes the whole matter more ludicrous by his evident straining after that which on all principles of propriety he should rather attempt strenuously to avoid. * * * * * _Scraps, No. 1. Sketched, Etched, and Published by D. C. Johnston. Boston._ This thin quarto contains some fifty “hits,” humorous and satirical, done on steel. The sketcher is D. C. Johnston, one of the first caricaturists in the country, and an original observer of life and manners. Several of the illustrations are pictorial essays on popular follies and vices, and contain matter enough to supply thought for a volume. We like the idea of publishing occasionally a work like the present, recording as it does, with almost historical accuracy, the various forms assumed by the Protean genius of humbug to diddle our free and enlightened citizens. * * * * * _The Philosophy of the Beautiful. From the French of Victor Cousin. Translated with Notes and an Introduction, by Jesse Cato Daniel. New York: D. Bixby. 1 vol. 18mo._