Books are becoming scarce. To be sure, volume upon volume is published every day, but a book that is a book is a _rara avis_, and if any one should inquire whose fault it is, we reply that it is the fault of the press, constantly requiring the first-fruits of a writer's meditations. The journalist has displaced the author. The fugitive page rules the great world of literature. Wit, talent, genius, science, have not time to consolidate their thoughts, before they are disseminated. They are like the folds of the birchen bark, thrown off as soon as formed, to give place to new ones. And these in their turn fall, and are scattered. But, when we wish it, we can collect our literary leaves. How many handsome volumes are made up of weekly and monthly pages! The binder runs his needle through a collection, and the book is made. What kind of book? Ah, truly, it is not the venerable work of past days, which took ten years to print and bring to perfection, establishing at once a literary fame. It is simply a series of articles written by steam, printed by steam, and some bright morning bound up under a common title. But what is the story and the attraction of such works? Bless you! there is no story. The attraction is in the style (when there is any) and in the variety of subjects, which generally produces a variety of impressions. For an ordinary reader, to whom continued attention produces headache, there is nothing more agreeable than those album-pages, or fragments of mosaic. Thinking and serious minds turn rather towards works of consecutive reflection, or whose details contribute to the beauty of some whole. Variety is the wind to the weather-cock; and unity is the inflexible pivot which every weather-cock requires to keep it from being blown away. Thoughtful minds prefer unity above every thing. And yet they are only heavier weather-cocks, which turn round with a grating. Nervous and discursive reader! logical and phlegmatic reader! here is a book which will suit you both. M. Philarète Chasles has just published expressly for you his _Studies upon the Literature and Manners of the Anglo-Americans in the Nineteenth Century_. It is a work by compartments, any of them interesting to the superficial reader, and forming at the same time a perfect whole. Under the influence of a spirit of order, which professors by their vocation are very apt to possess in an eminent degree, the author has composed his work, not of articles written for journals, but by detailing articles a work whose plan he had before considered. The general design, to which he is obedient, is clearly developed, page by page, in his curious studies upon the Anglo-Americans.