This is a second edition of a charming biography, published in Boston a number of years ago, and now very properly reissued. It not only contains an accurate account of the life and works of one of the most remarkable and peculiar of German writers, but its pages throng with interesting allusions and anecdotes relating to his contemporaries. The letters of Jean Paul, especially, are full of life and heartiness. In the following passage, referring to his first introduction to Goethe, we have a living picture painted in few words. “At last the god entered, cold, one-syllabled, without accent. ‘The French are drawing toward Paris,’ said Krebel. ‘Hem!’ said the god. His face is massive and animated, his eye a ball of light. But, at last, the conversation led from the campaign to art, publications, etc., and Goethe was himself. His conversation is not so rich and flowing as Herder’s, but sharp-toned, penetrating and calm. At last he read, that is, played for us, an unpublished poem, in which his heart impelled the flame through the outer crust of ice, so that he pressed the hand of the enthusiastic Jean Paul. He did it again, when we took leave, and pressed me to call again. By Heaven! we will love each other! He considers his poetic course as closed. _His reading is like deep-toned thunder, blended with soft, whispering rain-drops._ There is nothing like it.” Goethe’s personal effect on his contemporaries, would lead us to suppose that he was, to adopt Mirabeau’s system of nicknaming, a kind of Webster-Wordsworth. * * * * * _Railway Economy; a Treatise on the New Art of Transport, With an Exposition of the Practical Results of the Railways in Operation in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in America. By Dionysius Lardner, D. C. L. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._ This is a very interesting account of the whole system of railways, written by a person who understands it in its facts and principles. The author has collected a vast amount of information, which he conveys in a condensed and comprehensible form. The motto of the work is one of Bacon’s pregnant sentences: “There be three things make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, and easy conveyance of men and things from one place to another.” * * * * * _Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution. By Benson J. Lossing._