LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THEODORE PARKER, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Boston. By JOHN WEISS. In 2 volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 & 445 Broadway. A work of two large octavo volumes, containing 1,020 pages, with two portraits of Mr. Parker, and some vignettes on wood. The author is John Weiss, and the biography is exceedingly well written, a great deal of it being given directly from Mr. Parker's own letters and journals. He was born in Massachusetts in 1810, and died in Italy before he had completed his fiftieth year. He was brought up on his father's farm, taught school while in his teens to provide money for further progress, prepared himself for the university, taught a higher school during his college course, studied the classics, acquired German, French, and Spanish, became a divinity student in Cambridge, added Danish, Swedish, Arabic and Syriac, Anglo-Saxon and Modern Greek, was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1837, and settled at West Roxbury. His labors were great: he preached, lectured, translated, edited, and wrote. His health sank under his arduous mental toil. He went abroad to regain it, and died in Florence in 1860. Whatever we may think of his creed, as a preacher he was able and earnest. He was a man of varied gifts, of wide and detailed culture. He was opposed to slavery, and stood in bold antagonism to the Fugitive Slave Law. He was blamed, perhaps maligned, during his lifetime, but posterity will acknowledge him as a man of large brain and generous heart. His letters are exceedingly interesting, touching upon almost every subject now under discussion. 'Would you be good, and fill each human duty? One art's enough for that--the finest art-- See but the good in every human heart.' WAS HE SUCCESSFUL? A Novel. By RICHARD B. KIMBALL, Author of 'St. Leger,' 'Undercurrents,' 'Romance of Student Life,' etc. New York; Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway. Leipsic: Tauchnitz. 1864. The readers of THE CONTINENTAL have been favored with the first perusal of this monitory novel. It is an accurate delineation of men and manners found too frequently in our midst, and the moral should be deeply graven on every heart. We feel the more at liberty to recommend this work, as it was commenced in our columns before the present corps of editors had entered upon their labors, and we cordially wish every species of success to Mr. Kimball. MUSICAL SKETCHES. By ELIZA POLKO. Translated from the sixth German edition, by FANNY FULLER. Philadelphia: Frederick Leypoldt. New York: F. W. Christern.