* * * * * _Scenes where the Tempter has Triumphed. By the Author of “The Jail Chaplain.” New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._ Here is a book, replete with morality and religion, in which a view of human nature is taken as it appears to an observer posted in a jail or on the gallows. There are nineteen chapters, each devoted to the narrative of a different person and a different crime, and each as interesting as one of Ainsworth’s novels, and as moral as one of Baxter’s Sermons. A book which thus addresses two large classes of readers can hardly fail to succeed. We should think it an admirable text book for Sunday-Schools in Texas. It places before every criminal’s eye a more or less distant view of the jail and gallows, and is thus really “an awful warning to the youth of America,” and differs essentially from the “Pirate’s Own Book,” “The Lives of Celebrated Highwaymen,” and other piquant books of the rascal department of letters. * * * * * _The Stars and the Earth; or Thoughts upon Space, Time, and Eternity. Boston: Crosby & Nichols._ This is a small volume of eighty-seven pages crammed with thought. It appears to have excited much attention abroad, and to have passed rapidly through three editions. The speculations of the author are grand and original, having a solid basis on undoubted facts, and conducting the mind to results of “great pith and moment.” We have no space to make an abstract of what is in itself an epitome, but advise all our readers, who have thought on the subject of space and time, to obtain the work. Its style is a transparent medium for the thought, and its meaning stupidity itself can hardly miss. It requires neither a knowledge of mental or physical science to be comprehended, though it is an addition to both; and it removes some difficulties which have troubled all reflecting minds. * * * * * _Retribution; or the Vale of Shadows. A Tale of Passion. By Emma D. E. Nevitt Southworth. New York: Harper & Brothers._