'Sure an' didn't I tell ye I was a _poor_ scholar,' said the young Irish sham-student-beggar to the gentleman who refused him alms because he could not read. In the same strain, as it seems to us, Victor Hugo might reply to the wearied readers of these tales: 'Why, do they not call themselves miserable?' Miserable indeed is the 'Marius' installment now before us--a mere sensation plot, brilliantly patched here and there with the _purpureus pannus_, or purple rag of a bit of imperial or later history, 'coached' up for display, but falling lamentably into what under any other name would be called a gross imitation of Eugene Sue. The point of the present volume, to which its scenes tend, is, of course, a robber's den--a decoyed victim--the police in waiting, and a tremendous leap from a window--the whole suggesting Mr. Bourcicault's moral sensational drama, or rather its French originals, to an amusing extent. Still the _genius_ of the author, always erratic, of course, is shown in more than one chapter. The trials and sufferings of 'Marius,' and his noble independence of character, as well as the peculiar and widely differing traits of his friends the students are set forth with great spirit, and with the intention of a good purpose. Victor Hugo is in all his works unequal unless we except 'Hans of Iceland,' which is completely trashy throughout; but he was never more so than in 'The Miserables.' We have spoken of this third part as though its first title were an illustration of the _nomen et omen_ so much believed in of old. We may add that like the _Mois_ of Alexandre Dumas, it has simply an _s_ too much, THE FLY-ING DUTCHMAN. By John Q. Saxe. Illustrated. New-York: Carleton. 1862. An amusing little series of pictures, drawn and written, setting forth the accidents which befell a 'Dutchman' in catching a fly. THE POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. With a Memoir. By Charles Eliot Norton. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862. Arthur Hugh Clough was an English gentleman of high university education and honors, and gifted with liberal and progressive views in politics, who, after distinguishing himself somewhat in his native land, resided for one year in this country as an instructor at Cambridge, Mass. On returning to England to take a place in the Education Department of the Privy Council, he wrote: 'I am rather unwilling to be re-Englished after once attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, _il faut s'y soumettre_, I presume, though I fear I am embarked in the foundering ship. I hope to heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful.'