_The Dynamical Theory of the Formation of the Earth,_ two mighty octavo volumes, elicits the following complimentary remarks from the _Athenæum._ "This work is saved from being mischievous only by the circumstance of the excessive dullness diffused over these twelve hundred pages--which will in all probability prevent their being much read.... Of no one department of science does the author appear to have a correct conception. His views are all distorted. He is false alike in his Mechanics, in his Geology, in his Natural History, in his Chemistry, in his Electricity--in every other consideration of the physical agencies, and still more false in that which we suppose we must bring ourselves to call his Logic." _Memoirs of a Literary Veteran_, by R. P. Gillies is a book almost worth reading, quite worth looking at. The author, nephew to the celebrated historian of Greece, born to a fair estate, and with a propensity to make verses, spent the one without turning the other to any special account. Amidst much idle matter, whose only purpose is to swell the bulk of the volumes, are some rather interesting anecdotes of literary celebrities. Some over-laudatory epistles from Sir Egerton Brydges, and a characteristic letter or two from Wordsworth, containing among other matters, a criticism upon Scott's Guy Mannering, in which considerable praise is awarded to the management of "this lady," as he solemnly denominates Meg Merrilies, are perhaps the best things in the book. It reminds one, but at a wide interval, of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography. _A Life of Hartley Coleridge_ prefixed to a volume of his poems, tells a sad story of powers neutralized and a life thrown away. He was the eldest son of _the_ Coleridge, and with a portion of his father's genius combined a large share of his infirmity of purpose and feebleness of will. He gained a college fellowship, and forfeited it within a year, by intemperance; after which he maintained himself by his pen. The Life is by his brother, Derwent Coleridge. The Poems are of decided merit. They are to be followed by a collection of his prose writings. OBITUARIES.