The great picture on Mr. Parkman's canvas is Champlain. That really noble-souled, heroic, and marvellous man, whom our author appreciates, yet with sagacious discrimination presents to the life, is a splendid subject for his admirable rehearsal. At the age of thirty-three he becomes the most conspicuous, and, on the whole, the most intelligent, agent of the French interest in these parts of the world. Dying at Quebec at the age of sixty-eight, and after twenty-seven years of service to the colony, he had probably drawn his life through more and a greater variety of perils than have ever been encountered by man. He was dauntless and all-enduring, fruitful in resource, self-controlled and persevering, and, though not wiser than his age, purer and more true. He was as lithesome as an Indian, and could outdo him in some physical efforts and endurance. His almost yearly voyages between France and Quebec led him through strange contrasts of court and wilderness life; but he was the same man in both. His discovery of the lake which bears his name, his journey to Lake Huron, under the lure of the impostor Vignau, encouraging his own dream of a passage through the continent to India, and his many tramps for Indian warfare or discovery, are most attractive episodes for our author. Mr. Parkman relates incidentally the massacre in Frenchman's Bay, the efforts and cross purposes of the Recollets and the Jesuit missionaries, and furnishes a vivid sketch of the fortunes of the settlement under threatened assaults from Indians and in a temporary surrender to the English. He intimates the matter which he has yet in store. May we enjoy the coveted pleasure of reading it! _Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days._ A Biography. From the German of J. P. Fr. Richter. Translated by CHARLES T. BROOKS. In Two Volumes. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.