Mr. Valentine is preparing a new volume of his Manual of the Common Council of New-York. The volumes hitherto published have been edited with great care and judgment; they embody an extraordinary amount and variety of interesting and important facts connected with the advancement and condition of the city; and the series is indispensable to any one who would write a history of New-York, or the lives of its leading citizens. The last volume was unusually rich in maps and statistics, and we understand that the next one will be even more interesting and valuable.
Mr. Willis has just published (through Charles Scribner) a new volume under the characteristic title of Hurry-graphs, or Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, taken from life. It embraces the author's letters to the Home Journal, from Plymouth, Montrose, the Delaware, the Hudson, the Highlands, and other summer resorts, with personal descriptions of Webster, Everett, Emerson, Cooper, Jenny Lind, and many other notabilities. It will be a delightful companion for the watering places this season.
Among the most beautiful books from the American press is Episodes of Insect Life, by Acheta Domestica, just reprinted by J. S. Redfield. The natural history and habits of insects of every class are delineated by a close observer with remarkable minuteness, and in a style of unusual felicity; and the peculiar illustrations of the book are more spirited and highly finished than we have noticed in any publication of a similar character.
The Harpers have published a new edition of the Greek Grammar of Philip Buttman, revised and enlarged by his son, Alexander Buttman, and translated from the eighteenth German edition by Dr. Edward Robinson. It is not to be doubted, we suppose, that this grammar, in the shape in which it is now presented, is altogether the best that exists of the Greek language. We are not ourselves competent to a judgment in the case, but from all we have seen upon the subject by the best scholars, we take this to be the general opinion.
John P. Kennedy has in the press of Putnam a new and carefully revised edition of his Swallow Barn, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion, one of the most pleasant books illustrative of local manners and rural life that has ever been written. It is more like Irving's Bracebridge Hall than any other work we can think of, and is as felicitous a picture of old Virginia as Jeffrey Crayon has given us of Merrie England. The first edition of Swallow Barn was published twenty years ago; the new one is to be beautifully illustrated in the style of Irving's Sketch Book.