This is a magnificent holyday gift, issued in a style of splendor that Butler alone can be chargeable with. Printed on superb paper, and filled with fine portraits of the leading American female writers, and gorgeous with illuminated plates by Sinclair. Mr. Read, the Editor, who is both poet and painter, has given us a token of remembrance in this fine volume that will live in many libraries and many hearts. It is just the volume to present to a lady of taste for a New Year’s Gift. No reader of “Graham” should fail to look at it. * * * * * _Proverbial Philosophy. By Martin Farquhar Tupper. With Sixteen Illustrations. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co._ Few readers of this Magazine are ignorant of these superior writings of Tupper; but very few, we will venture to say, have ever seen so superb an edition. The letter-press, the illustrations, and binding, are all of the very highest order, and the book is in every way entitled to a permanent place in the drawing-room of the educated and refined. In addition to its numerous superior engravings, the volume is graced by a fine likeness of Tupper, by Richie, which is of itself a treasure to his admirers. * * * * * _The Recent Progress of Astronomy; Especially in the United States. By Elias Loomis. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._ The object of this volume is to exhibit, in a form as popular as the nature of the subject will allow, the most important astronomical discoveries of the last ten years. The chapter on the Discovery of the Planet Neptune, is the clearest account we have seen of that scientific event. The portions on the Recent Additions to our knowledge of Comets, Fixed Stars and Nebulæ, convey a great deal of information in a rigorously systematized form. There are a hundred pages devoted to the progress of Astronomy in the United States, which will be read with much interest, as they enable us to understand the grounds of a remark of the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, that “the Americans, although late in the field of astronomical enterprise, have now taken up that science with their characteristic energy, and have already shown their ability to instruct their former masters.” * * * * * _Lives of Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of America. By James Wynne, M. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12 mo._ This volume contains lives of Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, Fulton, Marshall, Rittenhouse, and Whitney. They are altogether superior to the general run of such biographies, both in style and matter, and we have read with particular pleasure those of Franklin, Edwards, and Fulton. The life of the second of these is little known beyond the boundaries of his sect; and Dr. Wynne’s view of his character is the most correct we have ever seen. The author’s diction is admirably adapted for narrative.