s of novelties. The reviving taste
for this kind of speculation is a singular feature of the age, showing
the prevalence of a dissatisfied and restless skepticism, rather than an
enlightened and robust faith in spiritual realities. Mrs. Crowe is a
decided, though gentle advocate of the preternatural character of the
marvelous phenomena, of which probably every country and age presents a
more or less extended record. She has collected a large mass of
incidents, which have been supposed to bear upon the subject, many of
which were communicated to her on personal authority, and were first
brought to the notice of the public in her volume. She has pursued her
researches, with incredible industry, into the traditions of various
nations, making free use of the copious erudition of the Germans in this
department, and arranging the facts or legends she has obtained with a
certain degree of historical criticism, that gives a value to her work
as an illustration of national beliefs, without reference to its
character as a _hortus siccus_ of weird and marvelous stories. In point
of style, her volume is unexceptionable; its spirit is modest and
reverent; it can not be justly accused of superstition, though it
betrays a womanly instinct for the supernatural: and without being
imbued with any love of dogmas, breathes an unmistakable atmosphere of
purity and religious trust. The study of this subject can not be
recommended to the weak-minded and timorous, but an omnivorous digestion
may find a wholesome exercise of its capacity in Mrs. Crowe's tough
revelations.

A volume of Discourses, entitled _Christian Thoughts on Life_, by HENRY
GILES, has been published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston,
consisting of a series of elaborate essays, intended to gather into a
compact form some fragments of moral experience, and to give a certain
record and order to the author's desultory studies of man's interior
life. Among the subjects of which it treats are The Worth of Life, the
Continuity of Life, the Discipline of Life, Weariness of Life, and
Mystery in Religion and in Life. The views presented by Mr. Giles are
evidently the fruit of profound personal reflection; they glow with the
vitality of experience; and in their tender and pleading eloquence will
doubtless commend themselves to many human sympathies. Mr. Giles has
been hitherto most favorably known to the public in this country, as a
brilliant rhetorician, and an original and piquant