From the preface we learn that the present volume has been issued to operate against an unauthorized edition of the author’s magazine articles, published by some bookseller in New York, on his own account. Every respectable bookseller and every respectable book-buyer should avoid the pirated edition, on the principle of common decency and justice. * * * * * _Historical Studies, By George Washington Greene, late United States Consul at Rome. New York: George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._ Professor Greene is one of our ablest historical scholars, especially in the department of Italian literature and history, and the present work, embodying the thoughts and observations of many years, is a valuable contribution to thoughtful and elegant literature. The author combines the narrator and the thinker in just proportions, and connects with admirable tact, thoughts that quicken with biographical details which interest the mind. The subjects of the papers relating to Italy are Petrarch, Machiavelli, Manzoni, Verrazzano, The Hopes of Italy, Historical Romance in Italy, Reformation in Italy, Italian Literature in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, and Contributions for the Pope. The article on Libraries is one of the best ever written on that subject. Perhaps the most generally agreeable paper in the volume is that on Charles Edward. In this we have a flowing and animated biography, replete with novel facts, and as interesting as a romance. The author’s style, in all the papers, is sweet, flexible, graceful and condensed, indicating high culture, but a culture which has developed instead of deadening all that is peculiar in his mind and heart. * * * * * _The Early Conflicts of Christianity. By the Rev. Wm. Ingraham Kip, D. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._