Every lover of the romantic and picturesque in history will heartily welcome this re-issue of Irving’s charming Chronicle. By assuming the position of a contemporary, he is enabled to exhibit the prejudices of the time with almost dramatic vividness, and to give events some of the coloring they derived from Spanish bigotry without obscuring their real nature and import. The beautiful mischievousness of the occasional irony which peeps through the narrative, is in the author’s happiest style. The book might easily be expanded into a dozen novels, so rich is it in materials of description and adventure. In its present form it is replete with accurate history, represented with pictorial vividness. * * * * * _Domestic History of the American Revolution. By Mrs. Ellet, Author of the Women of the American Revolution. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo._ The theme which Mrs. Ellet has chosen is an important one, and absolutely necessary to be comprehended by all who wish to understand the American Revolution as a living fact. The great defect of most of our national histories and biographies is their abstract character, neither characters nor events being represented in the concrete, and brought directly home to the hearts and imaginations of readers. The result is, that most of us, when we attempt to be patriotic, slide so readily into bombast; for having no distinct conceptions of what was really done and suffered by our forefathers and _foremothers_, we can only glorify them by a resort to the dictionary. Mrs. Ellet’s book is devoted to those scenes and persons in our revolutionary history, in exhibiting which the novelist is commonly so far in advance of the historian; and she has performed her task with much discrimination in the selection of materials, and no little pictorial power in representing what she has selected. * * * * * _The Vale of Cedars; or The Martyr. By Grace Aguilar. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._ This is Grace Aguilar’s last work, in the most melancholy sense of the word, she having died of consumption shortly after its completion. The story is one of much interest; the sentiments beautiful and pure; the style sweet and pleasing. We have read none of her novels with more satisfaction than this. At a period when romance writing has been so much perverted from its true purpose, it is delightful to find a novelist who, to a talent for narrative, united a regard for the highest and purest sentiments of human nature. * * * * * _Norman Leslie: A Tale. By C. G. H., author of the “Curate of Linwood,” etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._