We welcome No. IV. of “Readings with my Pencil,” from a practised pen, and full, cultivated mind. The article headed “Verbal Criticism,” is of a sort which all the repositories and guardians of Literature ought oftener to contain: brief reprehensions of too prevalent errors in language; interspersed with curious philological remarks. The somewhat long essay on “Social Elevation” has much that is praiseworthy, neatness (sometimes force) of style, and in the main, great justness of thought. Its aim is, to expose and rebuke those two ruling passions of our countrymen, the _love of money_, and the _love of political preferment_. It justly and forcibly shews how these obstruct our progress in knowledge, virtue, liberty, and happiness, by merging all enlarged patriotism in the most narrowly selfish considerations. Bent on wealth, half our people forget their country's weal, in contemplating the increase of their private hoards. Bent on _rising in the State_ (as it is called,) or on ministering to those who do wish to rise, the other half sacrifice their country to their party, or to its leaders. God speed the Essayist in the wide, the universal dissemination of the views on this subject! After all, the “Critical Notices” of the Editor have afforded us by no means the least pleasure. They are acute, just, and pungent. There is one thing we particularly like in the criticisms of the Messenger. While it displays a becoming pride in whatever excellences our country and its literature possesses, it does not hold itself bound, like many of our journalists, to applaud every thing that is American, and to admit the justice of no animadversions upon us and ours, from foreign tongues or pens. Thus, in an article on Mr. Cooper's “Sketches of Switzerland,” it joins him in a just _fillip_ to our national vanity, which has made us believe for many years past, that “the name of _an American_ is a passport all over Europe,” a boast which Mr. C. says is refuted by many mortifying tokens wherever an American travels in Germany, France, Switzerland, or Italy. In a review of Mrs. Trollope's _Paris and the Parisians_, the Messenger again justly rebukes the same American weakness, by averring (what we have always upheld) that her book upon the “Domestic Manners” of America had many more truths than our self love would let us acknowledge. “We have no patience,” says the Messenger, “with that atrabilious set of hyper-patriots, who find fault with Mrs. T.'s _flumflummery_ about the good people of the Union. The work appeared to us an unusually well written performance in which, upon a basis of downright and positive truth, was erected, after the fashion of a porcelain pagoda, a very brilliant, although a very brittle fabric of mingled banter, philosophy and spleen.”... “We do not hesitate to say, that she ridiculed our innumerable moral, physical, and social absurdities with equal impartiality, true humor