The story runs that a lady and gentleman of eminence, devout spiritualists, residing at Rome, confessed to Mr. Browning that during Mr. Home's stay at their house they once forbade his putting his hand under the table, and the spirits wouldn't rap, and Home burst into tears, and confessed that _on that occasion only_ he had deceived them; that on one other occasion he had put phosphorus on the tips of wires and stretched them from the roof of their house to represent certain spiritual apparitions. 'And what did you say, how did you act, upon the discovery?' asked Mr. Browning. 'Oh,' replied the lady, 'I rebuked him severely; told him plainly how shameful it was that one who had been so supernaturally gifted should act so, and told him that he ought to repent.' 'And he still remained with you, and--' 'Oh, yes, we are perfectly sure that everything was genuine afterward.' Upon which the poet was so disgusted that he vented his indignation in 'Mr. Sludge.' FIRESIDE TRAVELS. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 'Travelling makes a man sit still in his old age with satisfaction, and travel over the world again in his chair and bed by discourse and thoughts.'--_The Voyage of Italy, by Richard Lassels, Gent_. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1864. New York: for sale by D. Appleton & Co. Mr. Lowell says, in big short preface: 'The greater part of this volume was printed ten years ago in _Putnam's Monthly_ and _Graham's Magazine_. The additions (most of them about Italy) have been made up, as the original matter was, from old letters and journals written on the spot. My wish was to describe not so much what I went to see, as what I saw that was most unlike what one sees at home. If the reader find entertainment, he will find all I hoped to give him.' And a churl he surely were if he find it not; for a right pleasant book it is to read--genial and full of the real Lowell humor, almost as characteristic as Jean Paul's, _der einzige_. 'Cambridge Thirty Years Ago' will carry many of our most distinguished men back to the sunny days of youth, while the boys of to-day will be delighted to know how it fared with them then and there. Contents: Cambridge Thirty Years Ago; A Moosehead Journal; Leaves from My Journal in Italy and Elsewhere; At Sea; In the Mediterranean; Italy; A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic. There is no use in praising a book of Lowell's; everybody knows, reads, and loves him. SIMONSON'S CIRCULAR ZOOLOGICAL CHART. A Directory to the Study of the Animal Kingdom. Published by Schermerhorn, Bancroft & Co., 130 Grand street, New York, and 25 North Fourth street, Philadelphia.