A eulogy, that is still not infrequently quoted, appears in 'Knave of Clubbs' of Samuel Rowland, produced in 1611:

'MUCH victuals serves for gluttony, to fatten men like swine,
But he is a frugal man, indeed, that with a leaf can dine,
And needs no napkins for his hands his fingers' ends to wipe,
But keeps his kitchen in a box, and roast meat in a pipe.'

Near the commencement of the seventeenth century, tobacco was very generally used in England and on the continent, and frequent reference is made to it in literature. Even ladies were wont to indulge in the weed, and Miss Pardoe relates that the daughters of Louis XIV. used to escape from the grave etiquette of the court circle in order to celebrate an orgie in their own apartments, and that they were once discovered by the dauphin engaged in smoking together at a late hour, having borrowed the pipes for the occasion from the officers of the Swiss guard. The charm which it exercised appears from Sir Robert Aytoun's sonnet:

'FORSAKEN of all comfort but these two,
My fagot and my pipe, I sit to muse
On all my crosses, and almost excuse
The Heavens for dealing with me as they do.
When Hope steals in, and with a smiling brow,
Such cheerful expectations doth infuse

As makes me think ere long I cannot choose
But be some grandee, whatsoe'er I'm now.
But having spent my pipe, I then perceive
That hopes and dreams are cousins- both deceive.

Then mark I this conclusion in my mind,

It's all one thing-both tend into one scope -
To live upon Tobacco and on Hope;

The one 's but smoke, the other is but wind.'

Perhaps the most popular of all tobacco songs is that beginning, Tobacco is an Indian Weed,' which has undergone a variety of changes from the reign of James I. down to the present day. It seems to have been originally written by George Wither, and in the 'Pills to Cure Melancholy' of Tom D'Urfey, it assumes the following form:

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE LIFE, TRAVELS AND BOOKS OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, with an Introduction by BAYARD TAYLOR. New-York: RUDD AND CARLETON.

name.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT has been one of the world's great men for the last fifty years; but beyond the charmed circle of science in which he stood, like another Prospero, unveiling the secrets of heaven and earth, he was little but a He had a great but vague reputation as a traveller and philosopher, but next to nothing was known of him personally. The present biography will do much to introduce him to the world of general readers; for no one, we venture to say, will rise from its perusal without a pretty clear idea of the man and his work. The biography is divided into four epochs, or books. The first extends over a space of thirty years, beginning with HUMBOLDT's birth in 1769, and ending with his sailing for the New World in 1799. It gives us a picture of his boyish days at Tegel; a sketch of his parents and teachers; his University life at Göttingen; his official employment in the mines of Bayreuth, and the difficulties attending the prosecution of his journey. The second book is devoted to his five years' travels in both Americas, and is in many respects the most interesting portion of the biography, interesting as the relation of an eventful journey, and in the highest degree picturesque. The third book commences with his return to Europe in 1804, and ends with his journey to Central Asia in 1829. The first chapter describes his twenty years' residence in Paris, and the multitude of books to which it gave rise. The resumé of these books, which by the way are a complete scientific library, is full and minute, and will be found interesting even by unscientific readers. In no other source can even a list of them be obtained. Book fourth resumes the narrative in 1829, and conducts it down to HUMBOLDT's death, on the 6th of May, 1859. The chapter entitled 'HUMBOLDT at Home,' contains a series of sketches of the great philosopher in his last years. The best of these sketches are by the author of 'Incidents of Travel,' and Mr. BAYARD TAYLOR, the popular American traveller. Mr. TAYLOR's description of his two visits to HUMBOLDT are admirable. The book will be very popular.

BRITISH NOVELists, and their STYLES. BY DAVID MASSON, M.A. Boston: GoULD AND LINCOLN. 1859.

PROFESSOR MASSON has ventured to attempt a classification of the whole world of novels. From the time of SCOTT he reckons thirteen great classes; the novel of Scottish life and manners, the novel of Irish life and manners, the novel of English life and manners, the fashionable novel, the illustrious criminal novel, the traveller's novel, the novel of American manners and society, the oriental novel, or novel of eastern manners and society, the military novel, the naval novel, the novel of supernatural phantasy, the art and culture novel, and the historical novel. This classification is hardly more useful or scientific than that of BULWER into the three classes of the familiar, the picturesque, and the intellectual novel, which might be sub-divided till every purpose of theory would be satisfied, though possibly it would be impossible to decide in which of a dozen classes to range any particular novel. Of all departments of literature, the novel is that which embodies the elements of real or ideal life with the least attempt to transfigure them; it lies the nearest to the extemporaneous and shifting phenomena of life as distinguished from the abstract principles and forms, the pure results of wide generalizations, which constitute the vital organism of productions of high art or exhaustive thought. To classify novels, therefore, is very much such an undertaking as it would be to classify men and women, to classify the seemingly fortuitous occurrences of an hour, a day, or a season, to classify the variations of the weather, or write the law of individual moods. The lectures of Professor MASSON are nearly the first attempt to weigh in a critical balance the most peculiar and distinctive class of books in the literature of the present century, regarded comprehensively, but probably it is as yet impossible either to assign to past novels their proper comparative place in literature, or to predict what new forms the prose romance may assume in its future developments.

GERMANY. By MADAME DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN. With Notes and Appendices, by O. W. WIGHT, A.M. 2 vols. New-York: DERBY AND JACKSON. 1859.

LORD BYRON was wont to style Madame DE STAEL a whirlwind in petticoats; MOORE named her the begum of literature; she has been often called the most intellectual female writer, and even the most intellectual woman, that ever lived. Intellectual greatness was certainly her leading characteristic. Few of her contemporaries were able to cope with her in conversational discussion; very few of them have written so ably on the highest questions of literature, philosophy, politics and religion; and not many civilians in her time were personally so formida ble to the Emperor NAPOLEON. The most remarkable of all her writings is, perhaps, the work on Germany. This was the first interpretation to France and England of the intellectual movements of Germany in the age of KANT and GOETHE, and it is equally admirable for brilliancy, profundity, and justness. 'Corinne' reveals better her ROUSSEAU-like ideality and brightness of passion

the Reflections on the French Revolution' are the best monument of her political sagacity and comprehensive grasp of the law and order of history, but the L'Allemagne' is the strongest proof of her philosophic insight, penetrating to the ultimate forces and issues of life, and unfolding in advance of all her countrymen the most subtle and eccentric speculations that the world had known from the time of the neo-Platonists. Fifty years have scarcely diminished its value; the leading chapters on general questions of society, literature, philosophy, and religion remain among the most important of those enthusiastic and spiritual writings which extinguished ideology and revived faith in France, and her special criticisms on the various departments of German literature, even her pioneer reviews of the great philosophers of the transcendental school, have been in very few respects superseded. The notes which Mr. WIGHT has appended from various sources supply all that is necessary to make the volume complete, as far as its design goes, according to the latest judgments. It is the design of the publishers to produce a uniform edition of translations of her principal works.

REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. BY GEO. C. BALDWIN, D.D. New-York: BLAKEMAN AND MASON. 1860.

Ir would be a curious study to trace the varying conceptions of the Gospel story and the Gospel characters through successive centuries, as revealed in the more genial and poetical of the Christian writings, and thus to note the various postures of the Christian spirit successively in the ages of persecution, turmoil, and barbaric invasion, in the mediæval ages of intellectual quietude, devotional sensitiveness, and poetical religious fancies, and in the late Protestant centuries of dialectic devotion and severity of dutiful life. The simplicity of the Gospel narrative would remain a constant element, but its kaleidoscopic reflections, its phases and adornments, would change with every change of period. The sacred lessons would be repeated in different forms according to the different mental and sentimental states of mankind. Dr. BALDWIN has developed from the New Testament a series of representative characters for the nineteenth century. The 'sensual man,' the 'impulsive man,' the 'avaricious man,' the 'beloved man,' the ‘doubter,' the 'religious inquirer,' the 'nameless moral young man,' the 'almost Christian,' the 'converted man,' are all characters of the present time, though the author imagines that they are Gospel heroes. The abstract elements are in the New Testament, the concrete impersonations belong only to the present impetuous, inventive, progressive, and rather reckless and break-neck era. The same characters were doubtless developed by medieval monks in quite another spirit. Something of the temper of the volume may be inferred from the fact that PAUL is presented as the type of the great man, and Pericles, DemostheNES, and DANIEL WEBSTER are depreciated in order to give prominence to the power of analysis, breadth of thought, irresistibleness of argument, wealth of illustration, weight of pathos, graphicness of picturing, energy of denunciation, sublimities of imagination, depth of tenderness, bursts of enthusiasm, and power of practical appeal of the tentmaker of Tarsus.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

EDITORIAL NARRATIVE-HISTORY OF THE KNICKERBOCKER MAGAZINE: NUMBER EIGHT. By reason of a necessity which is laid upon us, we must impose upon the reader some self-talk' in this stage of our editorial narrative: and although we shall try to be brief, perhaps we shall not be able altogether to escape the charge of bald egotism.

The 'EDITOR'S TABLE' of this Magazine, in variety and in its accustomed dimensions, may be said to have commenced at about the period of WASHINGTON IRVING'S Connection with the work. It has been continued from that time up to the present moment, with no diminution as to quantity, and we may perhaps suppose, with about an 'average' of quality. One thing is quite certain: it has been deemed individual and natural: and we can take our 'davy,' that from first to last, in our familiar chat with readers and correspondents, we have written nothing which we should not have said to them, face to face, if we had had the happiness to have had them by our side in the sanctum. Sitting there alone, or circulating in the society of a great metropolis, or sojourning at intervals in the country, we for years have seen much that awakened mirth, and felt much that elicited tears: and in jotting down these thoughts and emotions, we have had occasion invariably to find, as we have said before and elsewhere, that any one man who feels and enjoys – who can neither resist laughter nor forbid tears, that must out, and will have vent — is in some sort an epitome of the public.' This, at least, we do know: that we never heard any thing that shook the walls of the sanctum with laughter, or brought the tears into our own eyes, which did not have precisely the same effect upon the general public, when it had been naturally and appropriately recorded. And so it was that our 'TABLE' and 'GoSSIP' grew up and expanded, 'even unto this present:' praised much, and quoted, beyond its deserts; at the same time affording us, meanwhile, the utmost pleasure in the concoction; enhanced not a little by the thought, that if our readers should happen to be bored, they would not be bored long; for the subjects were various, briefly touched upon, and 'dispatched at once;' Gossip,' literally sad thoughts and glad thoughts, influenced by all seasons and jotted down at all seasons; scenes and incidents in town and country, and all over the country; familiar home-views, anecdotes and stories not a few; many and multifarious matters, in short, that made the writer laugh, and many that moistened his eyes as he wrote and read or re-read them.