‘Milk for Babes,’ an elaborately-concocted satire upon a certain class of ‘learned and pious hand-books for urchins of both sexes,’ is not without humor, and ridicules what indeed in some respects deserves animadversion. We affect as little as our correspondent what has been rightly termed ‘a clumsy fumbling for the half-formed intellect, a merciless hunting down of the tender and unfledged thought,’ through the means of ‘instructive’ little books, wherein an insipid tale goes feebly wriggling through an unmerciful load of moral, religious and scientific preaching; or an apparently simple dialogue involves subjects of the highest difficulty, which are chattered over between two juvenile prodigies, or delivered to them in mouthfuls, curiously adapted to their powers of swallowing. ‘The minor manners and duties,’ says our correspondent, ‘are quite overlooked by misguided parents now-a-days;’ and this he illustrates by an anecdote: ‘Thomas, my son,’ said a father to a lad in my hearing, the other day, ‘won’t you show the gentleman your last composition?’ ‘I don’t want to,’ said he. ‘I wish you would,’ responded the father. ‘I wont!’ was the reply; ‘I’ll be goy-blamed if I do!’ A sickly, half-approving smile passed over the face of the father, as he said, in extenuation of his son’s brusquerie: ‘Tom don’t lack manners generally; but the fact is, he’s got such a cold, he is almost a fool!’ Kind parent! happy boy! ••• We would counsel such of our readers as can command it, to secure the perusal of ‘Hugh Adamson’s Reply to John Campbell,’ in the matter of international copy-right. Mr. Campbell, being a paper dealer, and greatly benefitted in his business by the increased sale of stock consequent upon the influx of cheap republications, is naturally very anxious to prevent the passage of an international copy-right law. As might be anticipated of such an advocate, his real reasons are all based upon the argumentum ad crumenam, the argument to the purse. Mr. Adamson, in a few satirical, well-reasoned, sententious paragraphs, has fairly demolished the superstructure which Selfishness had reared, and exposed the misrepresentations upon which alone the unsubstantial fabric could have rested. It is quiet and good-natured, but cutting; and will act as an antidote to the elaborate sophistry of Mr. Campbell’s ambitious brochure. ••• We think we shall publish ‘L. D. Q.’s ‘Parody;’ but should like him to change the third stanza, which is ‘like a mildewed ear, blasting its wholesome brothers.’ The other verses are capital. One of the cleverest modern parodies which we remember, was written in a Philadelphia journal, and touched upon some exciting city event, before the Court of Sessions. It was in the measure of ‘The Cork Leg,’ and ran somewhat as follows:

‘The defendant said that it was too bad

To be taken up before Judge Con-rad.

·····

Now Mr. H——, the lawyer, was there,

With a pretty good head, but not very much hair,

So little, in fact, that a wig he must wear,

Ri tu den u-den a!’

The parody had the jogging, jolting air of the original, and was replete, we recollect, with whimsical associations. ••• We shall venture to present here the comments of two most valued friends and contributors, upon the performances of two other esteemed friends and favorite correspondents. Of ‘The Venus of Ille,’ the one writes as follows: ‘I fully sympathise with you in your admiration of this tale, as well as of ‘The Innocence of a Galley-Slave.’ I could not in the perusal of them both but feel the vast superiority of the Grecian over the Gothic style. For in spite of all the humor and wit and nature and pathos of the Dickens and Lever school, there is something more of the Gothic and grotesque in their paintings than in these pure and unforced limnings of the able Frenchman. Where the ground-work of the tale is of sufficiently bold conception, and the incidents offer hooks enough to hang interest upon, there can be no doubt that this cool style is by far the most effectual in the end. The more strained and heated style of some other modern authors will be very effectual for awhile, but the excitement of the reader will flag sooner. The reason is, that too much descriptive and passionate power is expended on minor portions of the tale; and the enthusiasm of the reader is partially exhausted before he comes to the grand catastrophe, where it should be most of all elicited. But writers like Walter Scott, or this Frenchman, are self-possessed and meditative in a great portion of their writings; by skilful touches giving the reader every thing necessary for him to know in reference to characters and scenes; and on any great emergency their sudden heat carries the reader away captive.’ The admiration expressed by our other accomplished friend for the chaste and graceful essays of a still more accomplished correspondent (there is nothing like disparagement in this comparison) is widely shared, as we have the best reason to know, by our readers on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘John Waters! There is a drab-coated plainness about the name, which is at the same time liquid and musical; not more liquid and musical, howbeit, than those charming commentaries of his on every variety of quaint topic; full of an amiable grace, tinged with the most delicate hue of a fine humor; a refined ore drawn from no ordinary mine without alloy; like the compositions of Sappho, to which an unerring critic has applied the expression, χρυσειοτερα χρυσου; the very best of gold. Doves never bore choicer billet-doux beneath their wings. A beautiful sentiment always touches the heart, though couched in homely phrase; but when one knows how to cull from our mother-tongue the most expressive words, and has gained that enviable mastery, making them fall into their own places, and thus become inseparable from the idea, the perfection of art is gained. Serve us up these choice morceaux each month, dear Editor; let them not be missed from the generous board, lest the banquet be incomplete. Let me tell you, in passing, that your correspondent Harry Franco’s tale is a caution to dowagers. Never have I encountered such a startling incident on the high seas, out of ‘Don Juan.’ ••• Did it occur to ‘N.’ that the change suggested in the mere inscription of his epigram, ‘Religious Disputation,’ would be entirely out of keeping? ‘Uniting the circumstances,’ as Commissioner Lin would say, would produce such discrepancy as was occasioned lately at a democratic meeting in one of the western States, where a certain resolution in favor of our old friend and correspondent, Gen. Cass, was made to undergo a slight metamorphosis by the substitution of the name of Mr. Van Buren; causing it to read something like this: ‘Whereas Gen. Martin Van Buren emigrated to the west from New-Hampshire in early life with his knapsack on his back, and unsheathed his sword in repelling the Indians and fighting against the British!’ etc. This historical fiction, in the antagonistic excitement of the moment, was carried by an almost unanimous vote! ••• Inversion of mere words, or involution of phrase and syntax, let us whisper in the ear of our Troy correspondent, is not a very great beauty in poetry. His own good thoughts are spoiled by this affectation. It requires an artist to employ frequent inversion successfully. The opening of the ‘Lines on a Bust of Dante’, by Mr. T. W. Parsons, affords a pleasing example in this kind. It is clear and musical:

‘See from this counterfeit of him