“Losing and Winning” is one of the most quietly affecting and excellent tales that we have perused for months. Let who will declaim against the evils wrought by fiction, we are sure that this same story contains more true practical wisdom—more forcible persuasives to the paths of virtue and duty, than many a well-intended volume of fact or direct exhortation. “The Swan of Loch Oich” is fair verse, and fair only. “Ulea Holstein—A Tale of the Northern Seas,” is touching in its catastrophe, but not well imagined. The writer is evidently no veteran. We have sometimes fancied we had reason to dislike the poetical contributions to the Messenger, while we were better suited with the prose. In the number before us there are three articles in verse—“The Laughing Girl,” “A Birth-Day Tribute,” and “Thy Home and Mine,”—which would do credit to any periodical. The Editor is evidently ‘weeding out’ as well as strengthening his crops of contributors, much to the advantage of his work. “Court Day” and “My First Attempt at Poetry,” are both well done. _A Lecture on Education_ concludes the contributed articles, and is devoted to a portrayal of the parental faults and misdemeanors which operate as serious obstacles to the inculcation of right principles and correct ideas in the minds of children. We heartily wish it could be read and appreciated by all the parents in our country. The Editorial Criticisms are spirited but just. “Recollections of Coleridge,” Colton's “Religious State of the Country,” &c. &c. are praised without stint; while Col. Stone's unfortunate “Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman,” is most unsparingly shown up. We like the independence, the directness, of the Editor, though he sometimes contrives to tread emphatically on the corns of an author for whom we have a tenderness. In the present instance, however, he has managed to be just right throughout, and our appreciation of his labors is graduated accordingly. From the National Gazette.