When our regiment left Boston, it went from Battery Wharf. I went on board the Merrimac. Kate could not pass the lines, and stationed herself in a vessel opposite, where we could look at each other. I aimed a rosebud at her; it fell into the green water, and floated away. The second and third were more successful. She pressed one to her lips and threw it back again; the other she kept. Afterward, with the practical forethought which forms a part of her character, she bought out an apple woman, and stormed me with apples. The vessel left the wharf, and I looked back with eyes fast growing dim, and watched the figure on the dock, bravely waving her white handkerchief as long as I could see. Well, it is hard for a man to leave home and friends, and all that he holds dear; but I do not regret it, though I have to rough it now. I am writing now beside a bivouac made of poles and cornstalks. My desk is a rude bench. I have just finished my dinner of salt junk and potatoes. On my feet is that pair of stockings. Profanity and almost every vice abounds; there are temptations all around me, but pure lips have promised to pray for me, and I feel that I shall be shielded and guarded, and kept uncontaminated, true to my 'north star,' which shines so brightly to me--true to my country and my God. LITERARY NOTICES. SORDELLO, STRAFFORD, CHRISTMAS EVE, AND EASTER DAY. By ROBERT BROWNING. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. The contents of this volume, though now first presented to the American public, are not the latest of the author's writings. It completes, however, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields' reprint of his poetical works. His growing popularity calls for the present publication. We would fain number ourselves among the admirers of the husband of Elizabeth Barrett; the man loved by this truly great poetess, to whom she addressed the refined and imaginative tenderness of the 'Portuguese Sonnets?' of whom she writes: 'Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.'