The present volume is the first of a series of six, in which the authoress intends to indicate the _rationale_ of the successful merchant, lawyer, mechanic, artist, physician and farmer, illustrating each department by biographical anecdotes. We have here, as the leader of the series, a volume on The Merchant. The style is gossiping, without much pretension to beauty or correctness, but the matter indicates a shrewd mind and extensive miscellaneous reading. There is one chapter devoted almost wholly to Robert Morris, a man whose amplitude of mind comprehended both statesmanship and commerce, and whom Burke might have adduced in proof of his assertion, that he had known merchants with the large conceptions of statesmen, and statesmen with the little notions of pedlars. Mrs. Tuthill chats very agreeably of Morris, and among other anecdotes of him, gives a laconic letter he wrote to some French officers in the American army, on their insolently demanding an immediate settlement of their arrears of pay. Here it is, and it is a good example of cutting knots which cannot be untied: “Gentlemen,—I have received this morning your application. I make the earliest answer to it. You demand immediate payment, I have no money to pay you with.” We extract this letter as a model to those of our readers who are often puzzled, under similar circumstances, to hit upon the right mode of announcing such uncomfortable demands to perform the impossible. * * * * * _Sketches of Life and Character. By T. S. Arthur. Illustrated with Sixteen Engravings, and a Portrait of the Author. Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, 48 North Fourth Street, 1849._ Mr. Arthur’s name, as a delineator of American character and manners, and an earnest and sincere advocate of sound, uncompromising morality, is already familiar to the reading public, not only in the United States but in Europe. His object, in every production of his able pen, is well understood to be utility—utility in the highest sense of the word, that which has reference to man’s eternal wellbeing. In his lighter as well as in his graver effusions, the same exalted object is always kept steadily in view. He writes to improve the characters and exalt the aim of his readers. This is the secret of his wide-spread popularity. Men love and respect those who exhibit a steady, consistent, and persevering adherence to principle. In the princely mansions of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log-cabins of the backwoodsmen, the name of Arthur is equally known and cherished as the friend of virtue, and the eloquent advocate of temperance.