* * * * * _A Few Thoughts for a Young Man. A Lecture, delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. By Horace Mann. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields._ The author of this eloquent lecture is known principally for his great services to the cause of popular education—a cause which he has adopted with his whole soul, and into which he has thrown whatever of fire there is in his blood and of intelligence there is in his brain. The present address flames with the peculiar characteristics of his genius—vehement, rapid, and epigrammatic in style, large, generous, independent and original in thought. We disagree with some of the positions he has assumed, but we know of few books which contain, in so small a space, so much to breathe energy and aspiration into the souls of young men as this warm gush of blended thought and knowledge, from a soul eminently energetic and aspiring itself. * * * * * _The Modern Housewife. By Alexis Soyer. Edited by an American Housekeeper. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._ This book we can commend to all ladies who are, or hope to be, housewifes. It simplifies the whole art of cooking, and has a receipt for every dish which the Heliogabalus imagination of man has conceived. It has been edited, seemingly with great care, by some gentleman amateur of the table, and contains directions for the food equally of rich and poor, the dyspeptic and the ostrich stomach. * * * * * _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D. D. LLD. By his Son-in-Law, the Rev. William Hanna, LLD. New York: Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 12mo._ The first volume of this important work has just been issued, containing long extracts from the doctor’s early diary and correspondence, and full accounts of his life and writings to the year 1814. As the biography of a good and eminent man, furnishing, as it does, the means of understanding the process according to which his character grew into such large proportions. The work promises to be one of the most valuable of the season. * * * * * _The Red Rover. By the author of “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” etc. Revised, Corrected, and Illustrated with a New Introduction, Notes, etc. by the Author. New York: Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._ We well recollect the excitement in the novel-reading world produced by this book on its first publication. The rush on the circulating libraries was continued for a couple of months, and even boys were considered behind the age, unless they had read it. In its present cheap and elegant form, and enriched by the revision of the author’s maturer judgment, we hope it will have another term of popularity. * * * * *