conclusion,--so that the Count's imprisonment had about expired by efflux of time when the Sacra Consulta declared it to be unmerited." * * * * * MR. BANCROFT is about publishing a history of the American Revolution in three volumes. It is announced by Bentley in London, and will be brought out here by Little & Brown, of Boston, the publishers of his History of the United States. The present book is altogether distinct from that history, upon which the author is still busily engaged. During the years of his foreign residence, MR. BANCROFT has been storing the richest materials for his great work; and the public, which in the broad perception and brilliant style of the first volumes of his History recognized the master, awaits with eagerness the conclusion. After the long silence of Mr. BANCROFT, the present volumes will be doubly welcome. The first volume, which will appear before the others, treats of the causes of the Revolution. * * * * * The Hon. JOHN G. PALFREY, L.L.D., has just published (by Crosby and Nichols, of Boston) the third and fourth volumes of his very able work on the _Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities_. It is about ten years, we believe, since the first and second volumes appeared. Without finding fault with Dr. Palfrey's politics, we are glad to chronicle his return to the pursuits of scholarship. * * * * * MR. GEORGE W. CURTIS has in press another volume of Eastern travel, in which the public will welcome the sequel to his very successful _Nile Notes of a Howadji_, one of the most brilliant books the last year added to English literature. We understand, from those who have been favored with a sight of the manuscript, that the _Howwadji in Syria_ will be somewhat graver in its tone than its predecessor, as befits a book which records the impressions of Palestine and the Arabian desert, but, that it will breathe the same Oriental atmosphere, and abound in the same graceful humor and flowing imagination which lent so great a charm to that work. No traveller so truly reproduces the soul and sentiment of these ancient and mysterious countries of the Orient as Mr. Curtis, and this makes him as much preferable, for our reading, to the collectors of dry statistics and the jotters down of petty daily adventures, as the artist who paints a lovely person in the full glow of beauty is to a tedious gossip who describes the color of her gloves or the material of her bonnet. The one gives you a living reality; the other mere accidents and circumstances. * * * * *