The letters take a wide range of subject, and treat of "Shakspeare, taste, and the musical glasses," in a vein that would have done no discredit to Lady Blarney and Miss Arabella Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs themselves. We might divert our readers with some specimens of criticism, or opinion, did our limits admit of such entertainment. We can only inform them, on Belle Brittan's authority, that worthy Dr. Charles Mackay, who suffers throughout the book from intermittent--nay, chronic--attacks of puffery, is "one of the best living poets of England"; Mademoiselle Lamoureux, the _danseuse_, is "better than Ellsler"; and pretty Mrs. John Wood, the lively _soubrette_ of the Boston Theatre, "possesses many of the rarest requisites of a great actress"! But these are inanities which an inexperienced and half-taught girl might possibly utter in a familiar letter. Not so, we trust, as to the belief expressed by Belle Brittan, in puffing "Jim Parton's, Fanny Fern's Jim's," Life of Burr,--"more charming than a novel," because, as she implies, of the successful libertinism of its hero,--when she says, speaking in the name of the maidens of America, "We all, I suppose, must fall, like our first parents, when the hour of _our_ temptation comes"! We should not have given the space we have bestowed on this worthless book, had it not been made the occasion of newspaper puffs innumerable, recommending it to the public as something worthy of their time and money. It is one of the worst signs of our time that a false good-nature or imperfect taste should lead respectable papers to give currency to books destitute of all merit, by the application to them of stereotyped phrases of commendation. These letters, without a grace of style, without a flash of wit, without a genial ray of humor, deformed by coarse breeding, vulgar self-conceit, and ignorant assumption, are bepraised as if they were fresh from the mint of genius, and bore the image and superscription of Madame de Sévigné or Lady Mary Wortley! This evil must be cured, or the daily press may find that it will cure itself. We know nothing of the author of this book, excepting what he has here shown us of himself. He may be capable of better things, and when they come before us, we shall rejoice to do them justice. But we advise him, first of all, to discard his disguise, which becomes him as ill as the gown of Mrs. Ford's "maid's aunt, the fat woman of Brentford," did Sir John Falstaff. Or, if he will persist in playing the part of a woman, let him bear in mind that to be unmanly is not necessarily to be womanly, and that it does not follow that one writes like a lady because he does _not_ write like a gentleman. _Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Drawing_. Designed as a Text-book for the Mechanic, Architect, Engineer, and Surveyor. Comprising Geometrical Projection, Mechanical, Architectural, and Topographical Drawing, Perspective, and Isometry. Edited by W.E. WORTHEN. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1857.