This novel, the third volume of Mr. Putnam’s elegant re-issue of the works of Miss Sedgwick, is especially interesting, as giving the best account we have ever read of life among the Shakers. The effect of the doctrines of that singular sect upon individual character is traced with masterly discrimination. The story is also one of the most interesting which even Miss Sedgwick’s genial fancy has invented, and fastens the attention which it once engages. * * * * * _The Origin of the Material Universe. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co._ This pamphlet is exceedingly ingenious and interesting, and is worthy of extensive circulation. It is a highly wrought description, on scientific principles, of the manner in which the earth was formed, and the events connected therewith from its existence, in a fluid state to the time of the Mosaical narrative. The theory of the writer is ably sustained, and, whether true or not, has the effect to stimulate and fill the imagination, and spur it to the contemplation of grand and majestic images. * * * * * _Zanoni. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. New York: Harper & Brothers._ The Harpers have included this work in their cheap “Library of Select Novels,” which has now reached its one hundred and forty-second number, and is probably the cheapest work ever issued. There are few novel readers to whom Zanoni is not familiar, and of all the author’s productions it best bears the test of reperusal. Its feverish power exacts a feverish interest, which is as unhealthy as it is stimulating; but this intellectual dram-drinking is now so common that the charge of morbid sentiment brought against a book operates as a puff. * * * * * _Household Words. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. New York: George P. Putnam. Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4._ Mr. Putnam, with his usual enterprise, has contrived to make an arrangement with Bradbury and Evans, of London, to publish Dickens’s Journal contemporaneously with its appearance in London, and to afford the English edition itself at what Mr. Chevy Slyme would call the “ridiculously low price of six cents.” The Journal is full of stories and sketches of a genial character, admirably adapted for the fireside of home. To the uncounted number of people who constitute Dickens’s public, the “Household Words” will be a welcome visitant. * * * * * _Letters of a Traveler; or Notes of Things seen in Europe and America. By William Cullen Bryant. New York: George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._