Having said thus much in favor of the _Washingtonii Vita_, we may now be permitted to differ in opinion with Professor Wylie and others who believe that this book will be a valuable acquisition to our classical schools, as initiatory to Cæsar or Nepos. We are quite as fully impressed with the excellences of Mr. Glass' work as the warmest of his admirers; and perhaps, even more than any of them, are we anxious to do it justice. Still the book is--as it professes to be--a Life of Washington; and it treats, consequently, of events and incidents occurring _in a manner_ utterly unknown to the Romans, and _at a period_ many centuries after their ceasing to exist as a nation. If, therefore, by Latin we mean the Language spoken by the Latins, a large proportion of the work--disguise the fact as we may--is necessarily _not Latin at all_. Did we indeed design to instruct our youth in a language of possibilities--did we wish to make them proficient in the tongue which _might have been spoken_ in ancient Rome, had ancient Rome existed in the nineteenth century, we could scarcely have a better book for the purpose than the Washington of Mr. Glass. But we do not perceive that, in teaching Latin, we have any similar view. And we have given over all hope of making this language the medium of universal communication--that day-dream, with a thousand others, is over. Our object then, at present, is simply to imbue the mind of the student with the idiom, the manner, the thought, and above all, with _the words_ of antiquity. If this is not our object, what is it? But this object cannot be effected by any such work as the _Washingtonii Vita_. NORMAN LESLIE. _Norman Leslie. A Tale of the Present Times. New York: Published by Harper and Brothers._ Well!--here we have it! This is _the_ book--_the_ book _par excellence_--the book bepuffed, beplastered, and be-_Mirrored_: the book "attributed to" Mr. Blank, and "said to be from the pen" of Mr. Asterisk: the book which has been "about to appear"--"in press"--"in progress"--"in preparation"--and "forthcoming:" the book "graphic" in anticipation--"talented" _a priori_--and God knows what _in prospectu_. For the sake of every thing puffed, puffing, and puffable, let us take a peep at its contents! Norman Leslie, gentle reader, a Tale of the Present Times, is, after all, written by nobody in the world but Theodore S. Fay, and Theodore S. Fay is nobody in the world but "one of the Editors of the New York Mirror." The book commences with a Dedication to Colonel Herman Thorn, in which that worthy personage, whoever he may be, is held up, in about a dozen lines, to the admiration of the public, as "hospitable," "generous," "attentive," "benevolent," "kind-hearted," "liberal," "highly-esteemed," and withal "a patron of the arts." But the less we say of this matter the better.