_The Southern Literary Messenger for February_, is before us. It is made up, as usual, of a very interesting miscellany of original articles. This magazine is rapidly winning a high estimate for the literature of the South. Its pages contain as good articles as any other Monthly in the country. Its correspondents are numerous and able, and its editor wields the gray goose quill like one who knows what he is about, and who has a right to. Commend us to the literary notices of this Magazine for genius, spice and spirit. Those which are commendatory, are supported by the real merit of the books themselves; but woe seize on the luckless wights who feel the savage skill with which the editor uses his tomahawk and scalping knife. The fact is, the Messenger is not given to the mincing of matter--what it has to say is said fearlessly. From the Boston Galaxy. _Smarting under Criticism_.--Fay can't bear criticism. The Southern Literary Messenger cut him up sharply--and Fay has retorted--evincing that the sting rankles. A pity. {344} From the Natchez Christian Herald. _The Southern Literary Messenger_.--This elegantly printed Magazine is issued monthly from the classic press of T. W. White, Esq. Richmond, Va., and has, during the year elapsed since its commencement, won a commanding share of public approbation and attention. It is truly a high-minded and liberal specimen of southern literature, on which is deeply engraved the impressions of Southern character and feeling. We admire the periodical more on that account. It has a glow of enthusiasm, offering to the public, if not the very best, yet the best productions it can command, with a sort of chivalrous hospitality which cannot but remind one of the gentlemanly southron at his fireside. Among the contributions of original articles for this magazine we cannot but notice the able historical papers entitled "Sketches of the history and present condition of Tripoli, with some account of the other Barbary states." These finely written papers have appeared in ten consecutive numbers of the Literary Messenger, and, together with "Extracts from my Mexican Journal," and "Extracts from an unpublished abridgement of the History of Virginia," furnish a valuable mass of the most useful information. The poetic writers for the Messenger, as a whole, are not the favorites of the Muses, and will no doubt be summoned to give an account of the cruel manner in which they have distorted the pure English in giving utterance to the spasmodic emotions of the _fytte_ which they may have imagined was upon them like an inspiration.