_Southern Literary Messenger_.—The May number of this periodical has been on our table for some days, but our avocations have prevented us from looking into it before to-day. It is as usual, a beautiful specimen of typography, and sustains Mr. White's acknowledged mechanical taste. Its contents are various, as may be seen by referring to another column of to-day's paper, and not more various than unequal. Some of the articles are creditable to their authors, while others—indeed a majority of them—would better suit an ephemeral sheet like our own, which makes no great literary pretensions, than the pages of a magazine that assumes the high stand of a critical censor and a standard of correct taste in literature. While its pretensions were less elevated, we hailed the Messenger as an attempt, and a successful one, to call forth southern talent and to diffuse a taste for chaste and instructive reading; and had its conducters been satisfied with the useful and creditable eminence which the work attained almost immediately, the Messenger would not only have had a more extensive circulation, but its labors would have been more beneficial to the community—the great end at which every periodical should aim. With the talent available in any particular spot in the southern country, it is out of the question, truly ridiculous, to assume the tone of a Walsh, a Blackwood or a Jeffries; and to attempt it, without the means to support the pretension, tends to accelerate the downfall of so indiscreet an attempt. We do not wish to be misunderstood in this remark. We believe, indeed we know, that the south possesses talent, and cultivated talent too, in as great abundance perhaps as any population of the same extent so situated; but the meaning which we intend to convey is, that this talent is neither sufficiently concentrated, nor sufficiently devoted to literary pursuits, to be brought forth in support of any single publication in strength adequate to establish an indisputable claim to superiority. Without these advantages, however, the Messenger has boldly put itself forth as an arbiter whose dicta are supreme; and with a severity and an indiscreetness of criticism, especially on American works,—which few, if any, of the able and well established Reviews have ventured to exercise, has been not only unmerciful, but savage. We admit that the number before, as well as the one preceding, is more moderate; and this change encourages the hope that justness of judgment and a dignified expression of opinion will hereafter characterise the work. The May number, however, is over captious, unnecessarily devoted to faultfinding, in a few cases. In criticising “Spain Revisited,” this spirit shows itself. About ninety lines are occupied in condemnation of the Author's dedication, a very unpretending one too, and one which will elevate Lieutenant Slidell in the estimation of all who prefer undoubted evidences of personal