Jameson has published a second series of her _Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art_, in a volume of _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, similarly illustrated; and nothing can be more graceful than this lady’s treatment of a subject which has not much that is graceful in itself.—To biography, a new volume of the _Life of Chalmers_ has been the most interesting addition. A _Life of Ebenezer Elliott_, by his son-in-law, possesses also some interest; and, with a little less of the biographer and more of the biography, would have been yet more successful. In English fiction, a semi-chartist novel called _Alton Locke_, full of error and earnestness, and evidently by a University man of the so-called Christian Socialist school, is the most noticeable work of the kind that has lately appeared. The other romances of the month have been translations from the German and French. The _Two Brothers_ is somewhat in the school of Miss Bremer; and _Stella and Vanessa_ is a novel by a graceful French writer, very agreeably translated by Lady Duff Gordon, of which the drift is to excuse Swift for his conduct to Mrs. Johnson and Miss Vanhomrigh. The subject is curious, and the treatment (for a Frenchman) not less so. Nothing painful or revolting is dwelt upon, and if it does not satisfy it fails to offend.—The London _Morning Chronicle_ has an extended and elaborate review of Mr. TICKNOR’S great “History of Spanish Literature,” in which it pays the highest possible compliments to the accomplished author. “The masterly sweep of his general grasp,” it says, “and the elaborated finish of his constituent sketches, silence the caviller at the very outset, and enforce him to respectful study, while the unaffected ease of the style, lively but not flippant, charms the attention, and not seldom disguises the amount of research and indigation which has been bestowed upon each stage of the history.” It closes its review with this emphatic praise: “this History will at once take its position as the standard book of reference upon Spanish literature, but it will not take the cold honors of the shelf usually accorded to such volumes, for it will not only be consulted but read. We cordially congratulate our American friends upon possessing a compatriot who is able to make such a contribution to English literature—we are not aware that we are equally fortunate.”—The third series of SOUTHEY’S Common-Place Book has just appeared. Unlike the former series, which consisted of selections of rare and striking passages, and so possessed a general and independent value, the present volume consists mainly of brief notes or references to important passages in a great variety of works, bearing upon the subjects of Civil and Ecclesiastical History, Biography, and Literature in general. The references are so brief, and the works referred to so rare, that the book will prove of little service except to those who have access to large public libraries.