Dr. A. K. Gardiner, whose clever book about Paris, under the title of Old Wine in New Bottles, is well known, has just published a noticeable lecture, delivered before the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the History of the Art of Midwifery. It is most conclusive upon the point of the unfitness of women for any of the more delicate and important duties in obstetrics, and is a sufficient argument for the immediate abolition of the so-called "Female Colleges." We recommend it to the attention of readers who feel any interest in the subject.—(Stringer & Townsend.)
Mrs. H. C. Conant, wife of the learned Professor of Hebrew in the Rochester University, has published (through Lewis Colby, Nassau-street) another of Neander's Commentaries, done into terse and vigorous English—The Epistle of James Practically Explained. It is needless to praise the great German, and it will readily be believed, by those who are acquainted with the fine abilities and thorough scholarship of Mrs. Conant, that this translation is in all respects admirable.
We are soon to have a new dramatic poem from Mr. George H. Boker, whose Calaynos, Anne Bullen, and Ivory Carver and other Poems, have secured to him very high and well-deserved reputation as a literary artist. We do not think any sonnets written in this country are to be preferred to Mr. Boker's, and his Ballad of Sir John Franklin, published a few months ago in this magazine, is full of imagination, and is marked throughout with the nicest skill in execution.
The last work of the late Professor Stuart, a Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, has been published by M. W. Dodd, in a large duodecimo volume. It contains a full account of the principal commentaries written on this book, and the translations and paraphrases made into different languages, with a new version, and exegetical remarks. A memoir of Professor Stuart is in preparation.
Mr. Richard B. Kimball, the accomplished author of St. Leger, leaves New York in a few days for a tour through Europe. No one among our younger authors has risen more rapidly in the public regard, or established a good reputation in literature upon a surer basis. Imagination, scholarship, and profound reflection, characterize nearly all his performances. The admirable story written by him for the present number of the International, we believe, is true in every essential but the name of the heroine. It is a reminiscence of Mr. Kimball's student life in Paris, where, for a time, he walked the hospitals with his friend, the well-known Dr. O. H. Partridge, now one of the most distinguished physicians of Philadelphia, who is one of the dramatis personæ of Emilie de Coigny.