Carlyle and Emerson.--They are not finished writers, but great quarries of thought and imagery. Of the two, Emerson is much the finer spirit. He has not the radiant range of imagination or any of the rough power of Carlyle, but his placid, piercing insight irradiates the depth of truth further and clearer than do the strained glances of the latter. A higher mental altitude than Carlyle has mounted, by most strenuous effort, Emerson has serenely assumed. * * * * * AUTHORS AND BOOKS. The Literature of Supernaturalism was never more in request than since the Seeresses of Rochester commenced their levees at Barnum's Hotel. The journals have been filled with jesting and speculation upon the subject,--mountebank tricksters and shrewd professors have plied their keenest wits to discover the processes of the rappings--and Mrs. Fish and the Foxes in spite of them all preserve their secret, or at least are as successful as ever in persuading themselves and others that they are admitted to communications with the spiritual world. For ourselves, while we can suggest no explanation of these phenomena, and while in every attempted explanation of them which we have seen, we detect some such difficulty or absurdity as makes necessary its rejection, we certainly could never for a moment be tempted to a suspicion that there is anything supernatural in the matter. Such an idea is simply ridiculous, and will be tolerated only by the ignorant, the feeble-minded, or the insane. Still, the "knockings" are sufficiently mysterious, and if unexposed, sufficiently fruitful of evil, to be legitimate subjects of investigation, and he who under such circumstances is so careful of his dignity as to disregard the subject altogether, is as much mistaken as the gravest buffoon of the circus. We reviewed a week or two ago "The Phantom World," just republished by Mr. Hart; the Appletons have recently printed an original work which we believe has considerable merit, entitled "Credulity and Superstition;" and Mr. Redfield has in press and nearly ready, an edition of "The Night Side of Nature," by Miss Crowe, author of "Susan Hopley." This we believe is the cleverest performance upon ghosts and ghost-seers that has appeared in English since the days of Richard Glanvill; and with the others, it will be of service in checking the progress of the pitiable superstition which has been readily accepted by a large class of people, so peculiarly constituted that they could not help rejecting the Christian religion for its "unreasonableness and incredibility!" * * * * *