darlings of fortune and among the nerveless, mind-emasculated Victims of Society who sing us their endless Miserere from the Sistine chapels of fashionable novels? You know there is, and if you watch the time, you may see that it is the warm truth from real life, which is most eagerly read and which goes most directly to the hearts of all. Never yet in history was there an age or a country so rich in great ideas, in great developments, or which offered such copious material to the writer as these of ours. Be bold and seize it with a strong hand. Those who are to live after us will wonder as we now do of the great eras of the past, that there were so few on the spot to picture them. Yet, why speak of _great_ scenes, when humanity and Nature are always great--great in small things even, far beyond our utmost power of apprehension? Forget the spirit of the past, live in the present, and thus--and thus only--you will secure a glorious and undying reward in the future. The fault of this volume, in the eyes of many readers, will be a certain confusion in the arrangement of the matter, and the want of sufficient expansion in the development of some of its leading suggestions. But it must be judged as the earnest utterances of a poet, rather than a grave didactic treatise. With the purpose which the author had in view, a spice of rhapsody is no defect. He presents a beautiful example of the smiling wisdom of which he is such an eloquent advocate. He has an intuitive sense of the genial and joyous aspects of life, and has no sympathies to waste on the victims of 'carking care' or morbid melancholy. A more complete exposition of the conditions of cheerfulness in the nature of man, would furnish materials for an interesting volume; but it belongs more properly to an ethical or philosophical discourse. We will not complain of the author for not doing what he has not attempted--for what he had no inward call or outward occasion; what he could not have accomplished but at the sacrifice of much which constitutes the charm and grace of the present work; while we cordially thank him for this endeavor to speak a cheering word in behalf of the joyousness of life, and to spread 'sunshine in the shady place.' R. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: SUNSHINE IN THOUGHT. By CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. 12mo, pp. 197. New York: Geo. P. Putnam.] HOW THEY JESTED IN THE GOOD OLD TIME.