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But we have not room to spare, for any further notice of such trash as this. The book is condemned. It is made up of -- not here and there a false or badly-conceived and badly expressed thought, serving as foils to genuine excellence -- but it is positively and literally made up of words without meaning, or unprecedented assemblages of ideas without wit, and of allusions to human suffering without pathos.

We conclude with this little extract, which, we freely acknowledge, bears the semblance of truth. "Another bright morning -- would that I were bright; but, no, I am as dull as a penny that has been in circulation half a century. I am disgusted with myself and life, and all that belongs to it. -- I am tired to death of this eternal round of little paltry nothings, that go to make up my existence."

The passage betrays a disposition to self-destruction. Suicide is a dreadful thing. -- Yet it has, at times, been justified. Cicero vindicates the conduct of Cato, "whom" he says, "it did not become to look on the face of the tyrant who had destroyed his country." It is a fair question -- especially when we consider the useful and noble purposes, which types, ink, paper and the labor of printers may be made to subserve -- whether the author of these "musings" would not do right, if he should carry out the threats implied in the last quotation, and put an end -- violently, if it should prove necessary -- to his literary life.

Southern Literary Messenger, Richmond, Virginia, March. -- This number of a beautiful and able monthly contains another chapter -- the sixth of a series -- on the History of Richmond. There is no purpose, which a periodical publication can be made to subserve so effectively as that of collecting such facts as form the contents of these articles. They are the rich materials of future histories; and as they are prepared by persons -- contemporaneous, or nearly so, with the events which they record, they are of incalculable value. To illustrate this, we shall be pardoned, if we make a few observations on the defects of nearly all historical compositions.

What is the actual condition of the Historic Art? Is it such as to warrant us in yielding to it the claim, which Bolingbroke in his celebrated Letters, asserts properly belongs to it? Is it indeed "Philosophy, teaching by example?"

It cannot be denied that some of the greatest geniuses, which the world has known, have been devoted to historical composition. As a work of art the mind of man has produced nothing finer than Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." In the conception of a truly grand subject, in the arrangement of vast and rich materials, in the decorations, and in the matchless propriety and dignity of the style, it probably surpasses all the productions of the human mind, except the great Epic poems. It lacks but one excellence; but it is an excellence, the absence of which converts this wonderful labor of a life into a curse to humanity. It lacks truth, and it has happened in cases, alas, how numerous, that the young and admiring reader of a work, in which he expected to find fairly recorded the most important period in the history of his race, rises from the study a sceptic in religion, a libertine in morals, and a scoffer at all that is great and holy.

We have selected Gibbon, merely for the sake of presenting a distinguished exemplification of the danger we are to guard against when we go to history for instruction. -- There is some risk to be encountered by the young student in all the great historical compositions. This arises from the nature of the object which the authors have had in view. He should bear in mind that these authors have, generally, been men of genius. Men of genius are always in search of broad, comprehensive principles. In physical science, such principles are easily attainable. -- The physical enquirer, following the leading of nature, collects his facts, separates from them all encumbrances of individual or specific peculiarity, and, fixing his attention on such qualities only as belong alike to all, arrives at a general law, which he contemplates with unmingled satisfaction, and announces with unfaltering confidence. The historian claims to be a man of science as well as the physical philosopher. But where are the facts from which he hopes to deduce a lesson, satisfactory to himself and infallible as a guide to the Statesman? They are scattered along through a series of ages, and over the surface of a wide empire; and what renders them still more difficult of analysis than even those spaces of time and distance is, that they are endlessly varied and modified by a multitude of circumstances of which the historian cannot estimate the nature or importance. When, therefore, he enters on the work of generalization, he finds that the vast number and infinite diversity of his materials forbids any such attempt with a prospect of success. In despair he abandons the idea of a philosophical history. Still as a man of genius, he discovers much in incident and more in character which as picturesque, and adapted to captivate a mind which is able to appreciate whatever is grand in intellect, virtue or achievement. The plan of furnishing to the scientific politician or to the students of human nature, principles analagous to the doctrines of chemistry or of physical astronomy is abandoned as hopeless, and the history becomes a series of splendid descriptions of battles and political intrigues, or of portraits of illustrious men.