Copy-right: they purchased the advance-sheets of Mr. Gilfillan at a round price, and their volume contains all the latest revisions and addenda of the author.

The Pilgrims of Walsingham; or, Tales of the Middle Ages. An Historical Romance. By Agnes Strickland. New-York: Garrett & Co.

Ir is one of the gravest questions in literature, whether the noble philosophy which is taught by history-or, in other words, by the experience of the past-has not suffered more from those romances which, attempting to render the study popular, have melo-dramatized its features, than from all that callous indifference or courtly flattery have effected by neglecting its pursuit on the one hand, or altogether perverting its teachings to gratify a reigning family upon the other. Be these things as they may, however, it is certain that, for the ordinary reader, those works of fiction which deal with widely-known and once-exalted characters, possess a peculiar and by no means unaccountable interest. There is instruction mingled with the amusement; and though we be deceived in our ideas of the people and the age described, we are, at least, most agreeably deceived; and carry away with us from our pleasant studies much of that easy, superficial knowledge of men and things which forms the staple of conversation in good society, and enables us to bear a part in discussions not too abstruse, relating to the subject. Of all writers of historical romance, Miss Strickland is alike to our thinking the best qualified and by far the most conscientious: she may heighten the colors of her picture; and that, indeed, is the artist's privilege; but she neither distorts the facts nor falsifies the general accuracy of tradition in the characters she selects to sustain the interest and variety of her plot. Her "Lives of the Queens of England," are already enshrined in every library which pretends to cultivate the belles lettres; and her "Pilgrims of Walsingham," introducing us colloquially to the court of that great though dissolute and unbridled monarch, Henry VIII., will be found a valuable and delightful addition to the light reading and historical education of the age. The style throughout is admirably sustained; and the character of Charles V. will be found to recompense the most assiduous attention of those who care to trace the effect of unlimited power upon the mind of a man endowed by nature with a noble and not unamiable disposition. The plot of the story is too intricate to be detailed in such limits as we find ourselves confined to: we shall therefore do what little justice we can, alike to our readers and the fair authoress, by advising all true devotees of the higher and the nobler order of romance to purchase and to read these "Tales of the Middle Ages."

The Home Cyclopedia, in Six Volumes. Each complete in itself. New-York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 51 John street. Cincinnati: H. W. Derby & Co. 1854.

THE student of polite literature will not need to be told the value of comprehensive and reliable Encyclopedias; the labor that they save him, the

information they condense and impart, the accessibility which they give to abstruse and valuable knowledge-all these, and a thousand other advantages, speak trumpet-tongued to recommend them. They place before the merest tyro, in a form at once pleasant and unlaborious, the concrete result and deductions of the great thinkers and explorers who have gone before him; he can master a subject in a paragraph, at least obtain a sufficient mastery for all conversational and superficial purposes, because that paragraph is itself the distilled quintessence of all that has been thought, discovered, and reasoned out in relation to the particular point of which it treats. An "Encyclopedia of the Fine Arts" was especially needed upon this side of the Atlantic, by those who have not yet availed themselves of the facilities for visiting Europe. We may build railroads, steamships, aqueducts, and arsenals, to order and by contract; but art is not a commodity that can be "raised" by any patent process, nor can a correct taste in the matter, so essential to those who aspire to the fullness of a polite education, be received by intuition, or created without reference to those works which are the standard of perfection. Mr. Ripley and Bayard Taylor, who have combined to edit the "Cyclopedia of Literature and the Fine Arts," have discharged their duty in a manner worthy of their respective reputations, and the nobility of the subject-matter of their compilation. Dr. Antisell, whose fame as a chemist and natural philosopher guarantees his ability to edit the "Cyclopedia of Useful Arts," fully equals what our knowledge of his manifold acquirements led us to anticipate; his volume is full of the soundest information, and complete in all its departments. The "Cyclopedia of Europe," by Francis H. Ungewitter, LL.D., may be taken as reliable authority for all facts connected with the history and geography of the continent it refers to; without either pedantry or prolixity, the German statician gives us a rapid survey of the history, condition, extent, population, government, military strength, and manufactures of the various cities, nationalties, and countries which successively claim his attention. The "Cyclopedia of Geography," edited by T. Carey Callicot, may be looked upon as the most perfect universal gazeteer yet published. Carefully condensed and abbreviated, the volume contains an account of many places altogether omitted or erroneously set down in gazeteers of greater bulk and pretension. McCulloch's, and all other European works of this description, reprinted and in circulation in America, will frequently be found either lamentably deficient or most grossly mistaken in the topography and statistics of the United States. Mr. Callicot has remedied their negligence by a thorough and elaborate study of all the best authorities upon the subject. The Cyclopedias of "Science," by Professor Samuel St. John, and of "Universal Biography," by Parke Godwin, we have not yet received, but hope to do so soon.

A few such works as these we are now noticing, would obviate the necessity of an elaborate and expensive library. They may be called the

"pemican" of literary food-condensed in substance, nutritious in the extreme, and safe and portable companions through the vast fields of inquiry over which the human mind is occasionally called to travel.

The End of Controversy Controverted. Two vols. 900 pp. New-York: Pudney & Russell, 79 John street.

We have been favored with a copy of the new work of Bishop Hopkins, being a reply to that well-known work of the Romish Dr. Milner, entitled "The End of Controversy." This title-not a very modest one by the wayis happily made use of by the Bishop of Vermont, who entitles his brilliant work "The End of Controversy Controverted." We do not pretend to be judges of theological matters; but we risk nothing in saying that, in this book, the Bishop of Vermont, who is universally recognized as one of the most learned theologians in the country, and one of the most powerful with his pen, has fairly outdone himself. History, logic, wit, and patristic lore, together with perfect clearness, manly vigor, and lively interest of style, render it the most readable specimen of theological controversy which it has ever been our fortune to meet. These letters of the Bishop are addressed to the Romish Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. A previous controversy on the Papal Supremacy having already taken place, some years ago, between these two prelates, Archbishop Kenrick can not, of course, leave this latest work of Bishop Hopkins unanswered, without judgment going against him by default. And in the present excited state of the public mind, in opposition to Romanism, not only will this capital work of the Bishop of Vermont have a large and rapid sale, but thousands will be on the qui vive to see what the Romish Archbishop will make out to say in reply.

THE

UNITED STATES REVIEW.

MARCH, 1855.

THE DISRUPTION OF PARTIES, HERE AND IN GREAT BRITAIN.

As to governments, this fact is clear: that in no country not absolutely aristocratic, can there exist of necessity less than two parties; nor can there, of a like necessity, be more. There may be factions divided upon minor issues, mere sectional disputes, or what we call ism-atic differences. But in no country having more than the will of a single individual to be its law, whether governed by a prescriptive oligarchy, as in Britain, or by a self-elective hierarchy as in Rome, or by the whole body of the people, as amongst ourselves, can there be more or less than two antagonistic camps.

In Russia, Austria, and in France where the divergence of individual opinion is suppressed, at least in its expression, by the ipse dixit of a dictator, the natural and healthy formation of two great rival parties takes the form of a thousand abnormal and occult conspiracies.

In Britain, hitherto there have been whigs and tories; in Rome, the adherents of an absolute papacy and their rivals, who would make the triple crown a mere bauble in the hands of the more earnest disciples of Loyola; amongst ourselves the people rallied equally around the federal and democratic standards.

We say that whigs and tories have hitherto been the rivals contending for the control of Britain's policy. That they no longer are so, the coalition cabinets of Aberdeen, the incapable, and Palmerston, the insidious, sufficiently attest. The whig and tory issues have unwittingly accomplished their design; and must now make room for graver, sterner, and more hostile questionings. For whigs and tories were but two rival branches of a dominant and ambitious aristocracy, each hostile to the other, but united in their still bitterer hostility to popular advancement. They used the monarch as a mere automaton, a puppet to be obeyed and adored by the people so long as he subserved the wishes of his lordly prompters-a puppet to whose shoulders by dexterous sophistries and the claptrap of a constitution, they could shuffle off any inconvenient responsibility or too intolerable despotism.

Until within the past few years, the aristocracy had absolute possession of what, with courtly sarcasm, they called the House of Commons. His Grace the Duke of Marmalade had his hereditary seat and vote up-stairs; his sons the Marquis of Anchovy, and the lords Henry, Augustus, Fitzplantagenet, and Charles all occupied their rotten boroughs in the popular branch and to the popular cost. When the farce of an election came, each titled county magnate sent down his rescript to his agent: "Tell the chaw-bacons on my property either to vote for my nephew, the Hon. Shuffle Tadpole and my friend, Mr. Toady Fitznoodle, or to prepare to face my strongest and most legitimate displeasure.' In other words, they might obey their consciences at the sacrifice of lands and home; or preserve their freedom by the entailment of utter ruin' on themselves and families. And so the aristocracy controlled alike the king and the commons, and yet managed to escape the dangerous responsibility of such a power, so exercised; and when the people grew enraged at some more than ordinary grievance, the commons made a mighty show of popular determination; they pointed to the throne and muttered Cromwell's name; and the monarch pointed back to the ministry, and the ministry retorted on the peers; and the peers protested that king and commons had conspired against them, and that the enormous and undue authority which the people arrogated was becoming every day more dangerous! And so the three estates of the realm played thimble-rig with responsibility; and when the people thought they had fixed "the little joker under the crown, or the woolsack, or the speaker's chair, behold! they were deceived by combination, and relapsed into