Regarding the discrimination shown in the selection of the letters, there must be naturally as many opinions as there are lovers of letters. The reader turns to find the epistles he likes best, and missing them decides that much of what was most worthy has been omitted. It would seem as if Horace Walpole's letters might have been more carefully selected; Charles Lamb's have apparently been taken haphazard, without any accurate idea of their true valuation; and as for Keats's, those everybody ought to know and love him for have been left out altogether. But unsubstantial things like letters, of which the charm is so delicate and elusive, stand less for what they are absolutely than for what they have come to mean for us. Sharply contrasted as now when bound up in a single volume, it becomes an interesting literary study to compare the style of one writer with that of another. Some of the "elegant letter-writers" seem barren pretenders enough when their vague, imposing, but patchwork sets of phrases are set side by side with the genuine outcome of real thought and feeling. Some very famous names are appended to tolerably indifferent effusions. It is very easy to decide whom we should have chosen for familiar correspondents. They are, after all, few, and first of all our choice would have been Cowper. Pencilled Fly-Leaves: A Book of Essays in Town and Country. By John James Piatt. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. Mr. Piatt has written a pleasant series of essays on a capital list of subjects. He makes a sort of confession in the title of his book, and in his preface besides, of their being inspired by his favorite authors. They may originally have filled a particular column in some journal, and in such a case were certain to have been turned to by its readers with an expectation of pleasure which they never failed to answer. It is the fashion with critics to make mention more or less slightingly of detached pieces bound up in book-form. But, after all, how else should we have had Lamb and Hazlitt? And such essays, from their enforced brevity, are apt to contain a freshness and spirit often lacking in more ambitious papers, where, with the same amount of actual material, three times the space must be filled. Mr. Piatt is a poet, and sees the poetic side of every-day things. He is, besides, a genial optimist, and finds in the disagreeables of life--for instance, going to bed in a cold room--a delightful experience: "But blessed and thrice blessed is he for whom hardy choice or a most beneficent--even when least smiling--Fortune has made his bed and smoothed his pillow in a cold room! He sleeps in Abraham's bosom all the year, indeed. To him are given, night by night, such new sensations as those for which kings might throw away their foolish kingdoms. He conquers his Paradise at one shuddering although faithful leap, and the gentle tropics over the feathers and under the coverlets breathe their tenderest influences to confirm its enjoyments."