We think it not unlikely that to the American reader the first half of the history will seem, at the present time, to possess a peculiar interest. For this part of the work contains the last great struggle between the French crown and the feudal princes,--a struggle involving the question whether France was to form one nation or to be divided into a number of petty states. Such a struggle is now going on in our own country. The question we are debating is whether the nation is to be disintegrated or consolidated. The theory of "State sovereignty" is nothing more than the old theory of feudal independence. "I love France so well," said Charles of Burgundy, "that I would fain see it ruled over by six kings instead of one." "I love the republic founded by our fathers so well," says Jefferson Davis, "that I would fain see it split up into several hostile confederacies." When we see that France, under the direction of a Louis XI., came out of that struggle triumphant, we shall not despair of our own future, trusting rather to the guidance of that Providence which is working out its own great designs than to instruments little cognizant of its plans and too often unconscious of its influence. _Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers._ By THOMAS FULLER, D.D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good, for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter, only--after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to reproduce the ancients--skilfully put in the manner of the old preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil War, is the former England over again now.