"When I say that everything is quiet here, I am wrong, for the men at least were very uneasy regarding what might take place on the 14th of July. It was whispered that there was confusion in the capital, and when the diligence passed by a great many small land-owners were on their doorsteps waiting for their newspaper, while their cows were feeding quietly in the meadow, not suspecting that there was a Ledru-Rollin or a Louis Blanc in the world who wanted to begin the world over again on a better model. This eagerness to know what is going on in Paris is a customary sign of disturbance. At present one is naturally anxious to know whether the little field one has planted with handsome trees will by to-morrow's sunrise belong to some obscure soldier of the obscure Sobrier. Formerly they were the veterans of Sylla or of Cæsar, at least, who took the house of Virgil, but now-a-days they are the veterans of Sobrier who threaten the house of Victor Hugo. The times are deteriorating in every direction." Further extracts might be made in abundance to show the humor that played over not the surface of things, but their inmost depths, and threw such a clear light on all sorts of topics; but the reader would do best to add this volume to the other two, and judge for himself how great is the merit of these letters, how rare the intelligence they show, how fine the appreciation of literature and of men which breathes through them all. They are books for all time. * * * * * _Books Received_. The Wings of Courage: Stories for American Boys and Girls. From the French, by Mary E. Field. With Illustrations. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Lotus Land, and Other Poems. By G.S. Ladson. Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson. The Young Magdalen, and Other Poems. By Francis S. Smith. With Portrait of the Author. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers. Imaginary Conversations. By Walter Savage Landor. Fifth Series--Miscellaneous Dialogues (concluded). Boston: Roberts Brothers. Biology, with Preludes on Current Events. By Joseph Cook. (Boston Monday Lectures.) Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. The Sanitary Condition of City and Country Dwelling-houses. By George E. Waring, Jr. New York: D. Van Nostrand. Meister Karl's Sketch-Book. By Charles G. Leland (Hans Breitmann). Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers. Beautiful Snow, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers. Dick's Recitations and Readings. No. 5. Edited by William B. Dick. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald. Nicholas Minturn: A Study in a Story. By J.G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. Cooking Receipts from _Harper's Bazaar_. (Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers. Devil-Puzzlers, and Other Studies. By Frederick B. Perkins. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. The Outcast, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers. The Publishers' Trade-List Annual, 1877. New York: Office of Publishers' Weekly.