FOSTER'S ESSAYS.-Mr. Robert Carter, 58 Canal street, has issued a handsome re-print of these celebrated Essays, which have now reached their eighteenth edition in England. Few books of the present century have won so wide-spread a popularity, or exerted a more wholesome influence; and many thousands we doubt not, will yet be made wiser and better by its inculcations. The Essay on Decision of Character, embraced in this volume, is probably the best known production of Foster. Every young man should read and re-read it, until his mind is thoroughly embued with its sentiments and its spirit; till he finds his heart permanently fixed upon a worthy life-purpose, and till he thoroughly feels the folly, the weakness, and wickedness of vacillating and wasting his time and his energies, in a world where life is so short and the business of life is so important. The Essay on the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion, is also a fine paper, the reading of which cannot be too strongly recommended to those for whose benefit it was written, and who, we fear, form a large class in this country as well as in England.

Messrs. Wiley & Putnam, 161 Broadway, have just published the Life and Correspondence of John Foster, author of the Essays above mentioned. We have not yet had the opportunity of seeing it, but it is venturing nothing to say that the correspondence of a man so celebrated and so intimately connected with the literature of his time, must be an attractive book. The same publishers are about issuing a series of new books for children, with abundant illustrations, under the title of Gammar Gurton's Story Books.

Typee, or a Peep at Polynesian Life, by H. Melville. An entirely new edition of this book is just out from the press of Wiley & Putnam. The most objectionable parts of the first edition, to which we took exception in a review in this Magazine, are omitted in this-an evidence that, for some reason, the counsels of truth and decency have been regarded.

Characteristics of Women, by Mrs. Jameson. Wiley & Putnam are republishing this work in numbers, each containing three beautiful engravings. Mrs. J. is an elegant writer. We observe that a volume from her pen, "Memoirs and Essays," forms No. 64 of the Library of Choice Reading, by the same publishers, who, by the way, deserve much praise for their judgment and enterprise in getting up "books which are books," and thus supplanting, to a considerable extent, inferior publications.

The Magazines for the last month, Graham's, Godey's, the Columbian, &c., present their usual variety of fare, and each seems struggling to distance all the rest in embellishments. But none comes with so rich a freight, or so chaste a costume, as the Knickerbocker. For untiring industry, exquisite taste, inexhaustible tact, and unfailing good humor, the editor of the Knick. takes the palm beyond a question. We always think of him as old Knick, remembering how many years he has presided; but when we open to his Gossip" and " Table," and notice the rare "juiciness of youth," the sunshiny cheerfulness that overspread and pervade his pages, we forget that he or anybody else is getting grey. Not unfrequently, however, it contains articles that have cost much patient and laborious investigation, and which would do honor to the best Quarterlies.

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The Modern British Plutarch, or Lives of Men distinguished in the recent History of England for their Talents, Virtues, or Achievements, by W. C. Taylor, L. L. D., of Trinity College, Dublin, forms the XVII. volume of the Messrs. Harper's New Miscellany. The author, in his preface, truly says, "Intelligent young persons hear names familiar as household words' to their parents, but of which they themselves know nothing; for we all have a habit of speaking of the events with which we were cotemporary, or nearly so, as if they had the same notoriety for the young that they have for the old." Such is the case of the eminent men for a century or two back; and in this work the author well fulfils his object, by giving biographies of some thirty-eight of the most conspicuous among them, of whom almost every one has heard something, but so few know the real history.

Clement of Rome, or Scenes from the Christianity of the First Century, by Mrs. Joslin. New York: Baker & Scribner, 145 Nassau street, and 36 Park Row. This is a charming volume, which, we presume, will meet with a wide-spread patronage. The object of the book is to give interest to the early facts and precepts of Christianity, by associating them with an accurate picture of cotemporary Grecian and Roman life. An introductory notice by Tayler Lewis, is a fine piece of writing, worth of itself more than the price of the book. Our narrow limits forbid us to speak as we should wish to of Clement. We recommend our readers to examine it for themselves. When they have done so, they will thank us for our advice.