For lyrical purposes the Italian style will always take the precedence, because music must primarily be addressed to the feelings. But it may happen, if ever we have great composers here in America, that to the instinctive grace and beauty of this Southern school the magnificent orchestral effects of the North may be added, and thereby a grander and more perfect whole be produced. At least, we can continue to be eclectic, and in due time we may develope music which, like Corinthian brass, shall contain the valuable qualities of all the elements we appropriate. * * * * * LITERARY NOTICES. _Biography of Elisha Kent Kane_. By WILLIAM ELDER. Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson. If Dr. Kane's character had not been free from any taint of imposture and vainglory, and if his reputation had not been of that kind which can be submitted to the austerest tests without being materially lessened, he would have suffered much in having so frank and truthful a biographer as Dr. Elder. Nobody could have been selected for the task who would have worse performed the business of puffing, or the work of recognizing and celebrating lofty traits of character and vigorous mental endowments better. He is a friendly biographer,--and well he may be; for he declares that his researches into Dr. Kane's private correspondence and papers revealed not a line which, if published, would injure his fame. It is, of course, impossible for so genuine a man as Dr. Elder to refrain from hearty eulogium where not to praise is the sign of a cynical rather than a critical spirit; but his panegyric has the raciness and sincerity which proceed from the generous recognition of merit, and never indicates that ominous falseness of feeling which the simplest reader instinctively detects in the formal constructer of complimentary sentences. Throughout the book, the biographer writes in the spirit of that sound maxim which declares it to be as base to refuse praise where it is due, as to give praise where it is not due; and we think that few readers will be inclined to quarrel with him for the quickness and depth of his sympathies with his hero, except that small class of "knowing" minds who, mistaking disbelief in human probity for acuteness of intellect, find a mischievous satisfaction in depressing heroes into coxcombs, and resolving noble actions into ignoble motives.