_The Parthenon_ is the title of a serial work on a new plan, published by Loomis, Griswold, and Co., the first number of which has just been issued in a style of uncommon typographical elegance, and containing original articles from several distinguished American writers. It is intended to present, in this publication, a collection of specimens of the literary talent and cultivation of the United States, as exhibited in the productions of our most eminent living authors. Among the contributors, whose pens are enlisted in the proposed enterprise, we find the most celebrated names in the field of American letters, together with a host of lesser lights, who have yet distinction to achieve. The contents of this number are of a high order, and give a rich promise of the future excellence of the work. It opens with an Indian Legend, by Cooper, called "The Lake Gun," which is followed by poetical contributions from Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Gould, Duganne, and Ross Wallace. _Narrative of Travels in America_, by Lady EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY (published by Harper and Brothers), is a perpetual effusion of astonishment and admiration at the natural resources and the social developments of the Western Continent. Lady Wortley is not a traveler of the regular English stamp, judging every thing American by the standard of the Old World, and giving vent to the disappointment of absurd anticipations by ridiculous comparisons. She has no doubt gone to the contrary extreme, and presented a too rose-colored picture of her impressions of America. With the quickness of observation, and gayety of temperament with which she mingled in all classes of American society, she could not fail to catch its most important features; but we think she often mistakes the courtesy and deference which her own frankness and intelligence called forth for a more decidedly national characteristic than is warranted by facts. On questions at issue between her own country and the United States, she uniformly takes sides with the latter. She shows a warm American heart every where, without the slightest disposition to flatter English prejudices. Evidently her nature is strongly magnetic; she wears her foreign habits like a glove, and throws them off at pleasure; adapting herself with cordial facility to the domestic life of New England, or the brilliant _far niente_ of Mexico. This disposition gives her book a highly personal and often gossiping character. She talks of the acquaintances she forms with the delight of a joyous child, who has found a new amusement, and generally with as little reserve. No one can complain of her fastidiousness, or of her unwillingness to be pleased. Indeed, the whole volume gives you the idea of a frank, impulsive, high-hearted Englishwoman, rejoicing to escape for a while from the restraints of conventional etiquette, and expressing herself with the careless ease of a perfectly natural character, among scenes of constant novelty and excitement. So