pith and moment" upon which a periodical of such claims should have spoken with wise authority. Our own country is full of suggestive topics for thoughtful, earnest, and learned men, and it is fit that the closet should send out its instruction to calm the turbulence awakened by tempests from the rostrum--that affairs should be subjected to the criticism of experience, and that what is new in discovery, in opinion, or in suggestion, should have quick and popular recognition and justice. We need--we must have--for this purpose a powerful and really national _Review_, to reflect and guide the life and aspirations of the country. * * * * * We mentioned some time ago that Mr. WILLIAM W. STORY, a son of the late Justice Story, was preparing for the press a life of his father, and we now understand that the work will soon be ready, in two large octavo volumes, to be published by Little & Brown. It will come too late. Such a memoir would have been very well received any time within a year after Judge Story's death: now the public mind is settled in an unalterable conviction that Judge Story was an over-rated man, and a consideration of the processes by which his fame was acquired is likely for a long time to sink it below its just level. We but echo the opinion of more than one eminent person connected with the very school in which he was a teacher, as well as the common judgment of the leading men of the profession in all the states, when we say that Judge Story was not a great lawyer; two or three of his books were good, but the rest were made for cash profits, and sold by means of ingenious advertising. Now they will answer for the country courts, and the inferior courts of the cities, where no opposing lawyer has enough wit and knowledge to oppose Story against Story, but they are no longer weighty authorities, and every term they are found to be of declining influence. As a man of letters, Judge Story's rank will be still lower. He has left nothing to carry his name into another age. Yet he was a man of much professional learning, of taste, sagacity, an extraordinary command of his resources, and a most amiable and pleasing character, and his memoirs and correspondence, if fitly presented, will constitute an attractive and valuable contribution to the history of American society. * * * * *