In the United States, it is only the readers of the literary biography of the last generation that know Henry Crabb Robinson even by name; for although he was intimately acquainted with some scores of distinguished men, and moved in the best literary society of England, he left little or nothing to recall his memory after he was dead, except the immense piles of manuscript from which these two volumes have been selected. These, we venture to predict, will enjoy a permanent place in literature, not much below the _Diary_ of Pepys and Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Mr. Robinson, however, had nothing of the Pepys or the Boswell in his character. He was a man of sharp natural faculties, excellent scholarship, abundant wit, eminent social accomplishments, and strong character. In his youth he was a foreign correspondent and sub-editor of _The Times_. Afterward he practised at the bar. But for the most important part of his life, covering a period of some thirty years before his death, he had no profession, and passed his time in the society of literary and other celebrities, with whom, for his extraordinary conversational powers and more sterling qualities, he was always a welcome guest. It is to his anecdotes and recollections of such men--Lamb, Wordsworth, Southey, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, Rogers, Goethe, Lady Morgan, Lady Blessington, Landor, and others--told with spirit and discretion, that the _Diary and Reminiscences_ owe their value. The work of selection and arrangement has been performed with excellent judgment, and no one who takes up the volumes will readily lay them aside. * * * * * THE ELEMENTS OF THEORETICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY; for the use of Colleges and Academies. By Charles J. White, A.M., Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Navigation in the United States Naval Academy. 16mo, 272 pp. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 819 and 821 Market street. 1869. Most writers of text-books, probably, are impelled to their task by an impression that a void exists which only can be filled by a work answering to a conception which they have formed in the course of their studies. This arises from the fact that few subjects of study can be thoroughly mastered by merely imbibing the ideas of another person, and that consequently every one who spends much time in acquiring, or particularly in teaching, any science, is obliged to think a good deal upon the subject, and hence to arrange it almost necessarily in his own mind in a different shape, and probably one better adapted to himself, than that in which it was presented to him. Finding nothing just like this among existing text-books, he naturally concludes that the really systematic arrangement has yet to be given, and by himself.