This work is introduced with the high endorsement of Prescott, the historian, and is worthy even of his commendation. The authoress is an accomplished Spanish lady, who has long resided in the United States, and who writes English with ease and dignity. The subject is entirely new, and the materials gathered from sources of which the general reader is profoundly ignorant. As a work of industry and research, therefore, it is of considerable importance to the student of history; but the authoress has contrived to make it equally interesting to the common reader, by the variety of novel circumstances she has introduced, and her anecdotes of court life. The present volume contains the Gothic queens, those of Oviedo and Leon, of Arragon and of Castile, comprehending a thousand years, from 415 to 1475. The early period to which the volume is confined, though it makes each biography short, makes each full of surprising matter. In the hundred queens presented to us, there are all varieties of feminine nature exhibited in connection with enough remarkable and romantic events to form the plots of numerous novels and dramas. The work is elegantly printed, and will, we hope, find a large class of readers. It should be continued in the manner with which it has been commenced, and we can hardly believe that annals, relating to a country so essentially romantic as Spain, and written by one whose whole soul is penetrated by her nation’s spirit, should not be received with marked popular approbation. * * * * * _The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Including a variety of Pieces now first collected. By James Prior. In Four Volumes. New York: Geo. P. Putnam, Vols. 1 and 2, 12mo._ Among the many good things which the accomplished and enterprising publisher of this work has done for the cause of classical English literature in the United States, the present cheap and elegant edition of Goldsmith ranks with the first. It is the only American edition which contains the new matter which Prior has collected. The first volume alone has a sufficiently large number of new essays to make every lover of Goldsmith procure the edition. Goldsmith is so universal a favorite, and the leading characteristics of his genius are so impressed on the public mind, that it would be useless here to speak of his sly, searching and genial humor, his shrewd and accurate observation, the generosity of his sympathies, the wealth of his fancy, and the lucid simplicity and sweet fascination of his style. Let the reader peruse the present edition in connection with Irving’s charming biography of Goldsmith, and we will guarantee that the works and life of the subject will be a possession to his imagination forever. * * * * *