This book, as originally published in London, was beautifully gotten up and illustrated with engravings of superior merit, which tended in no little degree to heighten the public interest in its behalf. The present volume is well printed on passable paper—and no more. The name of Leigh Ritchie however, is a host in itself. He has never, to our knowledge, written a bad thing. His Russia and the Russians has all the spirit and glowing vigor of romance. It is full of every species of entertainment, and will prove in America as it has in England, one of the most popular books of the season. In this respect it will differ no less widely from the England of Professor Von Raumer than it differs from it in matter and manner, the vivacious writer of Schinderhannes suffering his own individuality of temperament to color every thing he sees, and giving us under the grave title of Russia and the Russians, a brilliant mass of anecdote, narrative, description and sentiment—the profound historian disdaining embellishment, and busying himself only in laying bare with a master-hand the very anatomy of England. It is amusing, however, although by no means extraordinary, that were we to glean the character of each work from the respective statements of the two writers in their prefaces, we would be forced to arrive at a conclusion precisely the reverse. In this view of the case Leigh Ritchie would be Professor Von Raumer, and Professor Von Raumer Leigh Ritchie. We copy from the book before us the _commencement_ of a sketch of St. Petersburg, in which the artist has done far more in giving a vivid idea of that city than many a wiser man in the sum total of an elaborate painting. St. Petersburg has been frequently called “the most magnificent city in Europe,” but the expression appears to me to be wholly destitute of meaning. Venice is a magnificent city, so is Paris, so is St. Petersburg; but there are no points of _comparison_ among them. St. Petersburg is a city of new houses, newly painted. The designs of some of them may be old, but the copies are evidently new. They imitate the classic models; but they often imitate them badly, and there is always something to remind one that they are not the genuine classic. They are like the images which the Italian boys carry about the thoroughfares of London—Venuses de Medici and Belvidere Apollos, in stucco.