* * * * * Query. Does it follow that a FREAR charter will secure a Freer municipal election? * * * * * BOOK NOTICES. A BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. Edited and published by GAIL HAMILTON. New York: HURD & HOUGHTON. A regular equinoctial Gail goes whirling and tearing through tin leaves of this smart book. Its aim is to riddle and rip up the system by which certain publishing houses crush authors, and defraud them of their proper dues. The book is written with spirit, and has been issued in a very attractive form by the Riverside Press. HANS BRETTMANN IN CHURCH, WITH OTHER NEW BALLADS. By CHARLES G. LELAND. Philadelphia: T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS. Mr. LELAND, so well known as one of the most learned of our German scholars, has made a specialty of the character known in this country as a "Dutchman." The little volume under notice, which has been very tastefully set forth by Messrs. PETERSON, contains much amusing matter, couched in that queer compound of German and English in the manufacture of which Mr. LELAND excels. * * * * * We are indebted to Messrs. GURNEY & SON for a number of photographs of public characters, executed in the best manner of the art. The "mugs" issued by Messrs. GURNEY are quite equal, if not superior, to that most celebrated of all mugs, the "Holy Grail." CONDENSED CONGRESS. SENATE. [Illustration with letter 'A'] Action in Congress has not been very lively of late. It is Lent; and the exhilarating sort of entertainment provided by the "high requiem" of a SUMNER, or the wild warbling of a DRAKE, is considered to be unseasonable. The Senate is not a faster, though Senator SUMMER'S tongue goes faster than any body else's in it; nor yet a prayer, though Senator YATES is undeniably Prairie in his oratory; but it is a humiliation. As Lord ASHBURNHAM well remarked when he saw it in its fresh hey-day, we may repeat in its old salt-hay-day, "'Pon mee sole, uno, it is a pudding-headed lot of duffers." PUNCHINELLO finds nothing to make his weekly abstract and brief chronicle of this asylum for elderly and uninteresting lunatics about without making it too weakly. In the language of Bishop POTTER, when asked by the Rev. Dr. DIX what he would do in the event of a heart turning up, "I'll pass" to-- THE HOUSE,