The Ven. Grignon de Montfort was a priest of noble birth, who lived and labored in France as a missionary, and became the founder of two religious congregations, during the eighteenth century. He was a person of great individuality of character and many peculiar gifts and traits, which made his life quite a salient one, if we may be allowed the expression. His talents for poetry, music, and the arts of design, and a marked poetic fervor in his temperament, gave a certain zest and raciness to his career as a missionary, and were a great help to his success. His character was chivalrous and daring, and his sanctity shows a kind of exaltation, a sort of gay mockery of danger, contempt, privation, and suffering, which it almost takes one's breath away to contemplate. His life was very short, but his labors, persecutions, and services were very great. He is best known in modern times by his extraordinary devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It is altogether probable that ere long the process of his canonization will be completed, and a decree of the Vicar of Christ enroll his name among the saints. Those who are capable of profiting by an example, and by writings of such sublime spirituality, will find something in this book seldom to be met with even in the Lives of Saints. A TEXT-BOOK OF ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY, THEORETICAL AND INORGANIC. By George F. Barker, M.D., Professor of Physiological Chemistry in Yale College, New Haven, Conn. Charles C. Chatfield & Co. 1870. Chemical science, as Prof. Barker remarks in his preface, has indeed undergone a remarkable revolution in the last few years; and the text-books which were excellent not long ago are now almost useless, as far as the theoretical part of the subject is concerned. And though, in all probability, more brilliant discoveries as to the internal constitution of matter, the formation of molecules, and the nature of the chemical adhesion of atoms are in store than any yet made, still the conclusions recently attained on these points maybe considered as well established, and can by no means be considered as crude speculations, to be overthrown to-morrow by others of no greater weight. Chemistry seems, at present, to promise better than ever before to solve the problem of the arrangement of the ultimate material elements, though, perhaps, the laws of the forces which connect them, and the nature of the molecular movements, will be rather obtained from other sources.