_Celebrated Trials of all Countries, and remarkable cases of Criminal Jurisprudence, selected by a Member of the Philadelphia Bar. Philadelphia, E. L. Carey and A. Hart._ Such a book as this was much wanted. The records of criminal trials were scattered through the newspapers or buried in some huge tomes of antique law reports, almost inaccessible to the ordinary reader. And this book seems fitted to supply the deficiency to a considerable extent. It is a large octavo, and contains a selection of criminal trials from the early period of 1588, down to the present day, among them some of the most celebrated cases on record, such as that of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1602, of the Earl of Strafford in 1643, of Alexis Petrowitz Czarowitz in 1815, of the rebels, Kilmarnock, Cromartie, Balmerino, &c. in 1745, and others of equal interest--the judicial proceedings in relation to which, belong to history. The contents of the work are highly interesting, but we cannot withhold our censure of their arrangement. The trials are huddled together without the slightest attention to chronological order; and it would seem that the gentleman of the Philadelphia Bar, who is made responsible for the compilation of the work, could merely have selected the several cases leaving the printer to arrange them as he pleased. The consequence is, that the reader finds himself shifting backward and forward, from century to century, in a complete medley of dates. This is to be lamented, because the history of criminal jurisprudence is a history of the progress of civil liberty, and of the expansion of the human mind. And the interest which we find in tracing the progress of just and equitable rules in the trials of malefactors, is marred by this defect of arrangement. As future volumes of this work are partly promised, it is to be hoped that in them this fault will be amended. * * * * * _No Fiction_. _A Narrative founded on recent and interesting facts, by the Rev. Andrew Reed, D.D._ has been republished by the Harpers. With a plot of great simplicity, and with diction equally simple, this work has attained much celebrity. It is indeed thrillingly interesting. _Martha_, a more recent effort by the same writer, is however, in every respect a book of greater merit. * * * * *