The _American Gift Books_ for the present season surpass any hitherto published, both as regards literature and art. The _Home Book of the Picturesque_, published by Mr. Putnam, is the finest combination of all needful qualities for such a work, that has ever appeared in the English language. The late Fenimore Cooper (of whose admirable article we publish a large portion in preceding pages), Miss Susan Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, W. C. Bryant, N. P. Willis, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, and Dr. Bethune, are among the contributors, and Durand, Huntington, Cole, Cropsey, &c., furnish pictures, from the most striking, beautiful, and least-known scenery in America. The publishers of the world do not this year furnish a volume more admirable. The _Book of Home Beauty_, containing exquisitely engraved portraits of some of the most distinguished women in American society, by Charles Martin, with letter-press by Mrs. Kirkland, is another fine quarto; and _The Memorial_, an octavo, written by Nathanael Hawthorne, N. P. Willis, G. P. R. James, R. B. Kimball, Dr. Mayo, W. G. Simms, Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Oakes Smith, and others, is very much above any "Keepsake" or "Souvenir" ever before printed in England or in America. * * * * * We have new volumes of Poems, by Messrs. LONGFELLOW, BAYARD TAYLOR, and R. H. STODDARD, from the press of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, of which appropriate notices are deferred until the next month. * * * * *