"After an experience of many years in teaching, we are convinced that such works as the Adventures of Telemachus and the History of Charles XII., despite their incontestable beauty of style and richness of material, are too difficult for beginners, even of mature age. Such works, too, consisting of a continuous narrative, present to most students the discouraging prospect of a formidable undertaking, which they fear will never be completed."--_Extract from Preface_. * * * * * The Banks of New York; Their Dealers; The Clearing-House; and the Panic of 1857. With a Financial Chart. By J.S. Gibbons. With Thirty Illustrations, by Herrick. 1 vol. 12mo. 400 pages. Cloth, $1.50. A book for every Man of Business, for the Bank Officer and Clerk; for the Bank Stockholder and Depositor; and, especially for the Merchant and his Cash Manager; also for the Lawyer, who will here find the exact Responsibilities that exist between the different officers of Banks and the Clerks, and between them and the Dealers. The operations of the Clearing-House are described in detail, and illustrated by a financial Chart, which exhibits, in an interesting manner, the fluctuations of the Bank Loans. The immediate and exact cause of the Panic of 1857 is clearly demonstrated by the records of the Clearing-House, and a scale is presented by which the deviation of the volume of Bank Loans from an average standard of safety can be ascertained at a single glance. * * * * * History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. By Samuel Greene Arnold. Vol. I. 1636-1700. 1 vol. 8vo. 574 pages. $2.50. "To trace the rise and progress of a State, the offspring of ideas that were novel and startling, even amid the philosophical speculations of the Seventeenth Century; whose birth was a protest against, whose infancy was a struggle with, and whose maturity was a triumph over, the retrograde tendency of established Puritanism; a State that was the second-born of persecution, whose founders had been doubly tried in the purifying fire; a State which, more than any other, has exerted, by the weight of its example, an influence to shape the political ideas of the present day, whose moral power has been, in the inverse ratio with its material importance; of which an eminent Historian of the United States has said that, had its territory 'corresponded to the importance and singularity of the principles of its early existence, the world would have been filled with wonder at the phenomena of its history,' is a task not to be lightly attempted or hastily performed."--_Extract from Preface_. * * * * *