A Class Book of Chemistry. By Edward L. Youmans. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
A capital volume, designed chiefly for academies and schools, but containing matter more important to readers in general than even to school-boys. It is a work in which the leading principles of chemistry are familiarly explained, and applied to the arts, agriculture, physiology, dietetics, ventilation, and the phenomena of nature. The writer is well qualified for his task, for he seems perfectly to comprehend the ignorance of the majority of readers on the subjects he explains, and accordingly directs his explanations primarily to exactly those principles which require illustration, before the mind is fitted to take in their applications.
Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses Connected with the Royal Succession of Great Britain. By Agnes Strickland, Author of the Lives of the Queens of England. Vol. 2. New York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo.
This volume contains the lives of Mary of Lorraine, the second queen of James V., and Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lenox. These biographies are quite able and interesting, giving vivid pictures of Scottish feuds, life, and manners in the sixteenth century, and exhibiting considerable research into the interior history of the time. The next volume will, we presume, be devoted to Mary, Queen of Scots.
Sir Roger de Coverley. By the Spectator. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
Addison’s Sir Roger is as universally known and appreciated as any creation of the comic genius of England; but the papers in the Spectator which refer to him have never before been collected in a volume by themselves. This is done in the present delightful work, and we commend it to our readers as a gem both of typography and genius.